Reblogged from Michael Meacher MP:
Why are apparently so few people worried that a state employee can now select
on a computer any item in their individual make-up – their address, phone,
mobile, email, passport number, credit card number (any of them), any of their
logins to a web service, etc. – and can thus access the content of their
communications, who they communicate with, the full range of their internet use,
their location, and a great deal else? Presumably because there has not yet
been a horror story revealing how these powers have been used to abuse people’s
lives. But it cannot be long coming. Power corrupts, as we know, and the
degree of power which digital technology has now put into the hands of state
officials is greater than exists anywhere else in the Western world. Before
long the abuse of that power will be exposed, the enormity of its misuse will be
revealed, and a national scandal will erupt. But uncannily, for the moment all
is quiet.
It is the Snowden files which have blown the truth wide open, but cyberspace
remains a mysterious technological vista that few have sought to master. What
is surprising is that the facts didn’t emerge sooner. Some 4.9 million
Americans had access to classified information, and nearly half a million
private contractors in the US had the top secret security clearance which
Snowden had. If it hadn’t been Snowden who blew the whistle, it would have
been someone else. That itself raises worrying questions. How secure is
this ‘secret’ material held by agents of the state, and who else might it leak
to? Can we be sure that some other person, for whatever motive, hasn’t taken
copies of similar documents to those squirrelled away by Snowden and handed them
to the Iranians or to jihadists? And if this all-encompassing surveillance can
be used, secretly and unnervingly, against the population of that state, what
can stop a foreign power (since with hundreds of thousands of technical
personnel in the know, the secrets are bound to leak quickly everywhere) using
the same device with much more malign purpose both against both that state and
its inhabitants?
But of course, as GCHQ is proud to insist, none of this is likely because
they always act within the law, as William Hague plaintively and forlornly
insisted in the House when the NSA Prism story first broke. If only. Oh yes,
the computer operator has to provide a justification for the information he’s
seeking, but that’s not too hard when he’s conveniently offered a drop-down menu
to prompt his thoughts. Oh yes, all this activity is supposed to be firmly
controlled by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA), but
actually RIPA is more about facilitating such exercises than curtailing them.
RIPA is so poorly drafted (deliberately?) and open to such broad interpretation
that it really allows government agencies like GCHQ to do whatever they like.
Oh yes, we’re assured by the Home Office that they’re only concerned with the
‘metadata’ (the technical wherewithall of communication systems), but the
Snowden documents tell us the truth: “GCHQ policy is to treat it pretty much all
the same whether it’s content or metadata”. And oh yes, oh yes, we’re always
told that privacy is fully safeguarded – until we discover that the US NSA is
spending £0.25bn a year on weakening encryption, and no doubt the UK GCHQ
similarly on breaking commercially available security products. Beware the
storm that is to come.
