Sunday, 23 June 2013

'Snowden's compelling leaks show us that mastery of the internet will ineluctably mean mastery over the individual.'

GCHQ revelations: mastery of the internet will mean mastery of everyone

If you think loss of privacy is a price worth paying for security, ask what a totally monitored future would look like
London Olympic Games opening ceremony
'This is for Everyone' slogan at the London 2012 opening ceremony, in relation to Sir Tim Berners-Lee's invention 
of the world wide web , now has a rather sinister overtone. Photograph: Martin Rickett/PA

'This is for everyone" was the message that flashed around the Olympic Stadium, as Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the British inventor of the world wide web, was revealed hunched over a computer in the London 2012 opening ceremony. With Edward Snowden's latest dramatic leak that the British GCHQ and the US's NSA are executing a plan – codenamed MTI, or Mastering the Internet – to collect a significant amount of the world's communications, that generous slogan, which applied as much to the web as the spirit of the Games, now has a rather sinister undertone. The web is for everyone and so, we learn, is surveillance.
Britain and the US have boasted of their democratic virtues for generations and they also gave the internet to the world – the Americans providing the network and the British the idea. But now the two countries are rapidly perfecting a surveillance system that will allow them to capture and analyse a large quantity of international traffic consisting of emails, texts, phone calls, internet searches, chat, photographs, blogposts, videos and the many uses of Google.
The system is currently vacuuming signals from up to 200 fibre- optic cables at the physical points of entry into the country, and will eventually allow for the shift that will occur in internet traffic with the continued rise of Asia. Mastering the Internet treats the rights of billions of foreign web users, the possible menace to the privacy of British and American citizens and the duties of their legislators with equal contempt. After Iraq and the banking crash, the world may come to see MTI as further evidence of a heedless delinquency in two of the world's oldest democracies.
As the enormous implications of this story become clear, about such things as the lack of meaningful oversight in both countries, the use of commercial companies and the wholesale disregard for the fundamentals of our two democratic systems, it's important to recognise that a decisive moment has been reached.
The impact of all dramatic stories eventually fades, but this revelation is of pivotal importance: either we allow the completion of MTI, or we demand that the two agencies are brought to account and properly controlled by the politicians that we put in power to look after our interests, not to squander our freedoms.
It is an alarming fact that over the last two weeks, as details of Prism and the covert acquisition of phone records have been laid bare, politician after politician, on both sides of the Atlantic and from both sides of the left-right divide, has argued that the loss of a little liberty is a small sacrifice to make for security. Most appreciate that no such transaction exists in the real world, for the very reason that those making the argument stand to gain so much from public acquiescence. This is about the unscrutinised power of a deep state and its burgeoning influence on society. Thanks to Snowden, the world has evidence of the totally monitored future that GCHQ and NSA plan for us, and that political establishments turn a blind eye to. As he said of the US's director of national intelligence James Clapper's assurances to Congress, "Baldly lying to the public is the evidence of subverted democracy."
That is a vital point in this debate, yet fear still trumps everything. On Tuesday, the head of NSA, General Keith B Alexander, and the director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, insisted that many terror plots had been stopped by surveillance. In Britain, the foreign secretary, William Hague, who is in charge of GCHQ and must know about the project to Master the Internet, was joined by three former home secretaries, Jack Straw, Lord (John) Reid and Alan Johnson, to reassure us that mass surveillance was indeed necessary to make interdictions and, in the case of these Labour ministers, that further powers were needed.
All of them, especially Straw, a former foreign secretary, must have had some idea of the scope of GCHQ and NSA operations. So why are they continuing to lobby for more powers under the communications data bill, when the ones already granted to GCHQ under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and to the NSA under the Patriot Act appear to provide all the access required?
It is possible to get the attack on civil liberties out of proportion in this debate and play down the successful interruptions of terror plots by web and phone surveillance. Yet it is vital to stress that good police and intelligence work on the ground are as much responsible for foiling terror as interceptions. The point about these latest revelations is that they show there are more than adequate powers for interception on both sides of the Atlantic and that the terror agenda and, to a lesser degree, the fear of paedophilia, may well have been used to elaborate a huge system of espionage and domestic surveillance.

The battle ahead is intellectual. What is worrying is the complacency in the centre ground, expressed by respected political commentators like David BrooksThomas Friedman and Bill Keller in the New York Times, the FT's Gideon Rachman and the Independent's Steve Richards, who seem happy to countenance losing a little liberty to make the world safer. None of the Americans compared their government's response to the loss of life from terror with its response to the vastly greater and no less ugly loss of life from gun crime. Their British counterparts, meanwhile, are sometimes guilty of being far too impressed with power, especially the dark energy of the intelligence agencies, as well as importing some of the inconsistencies and blind spots in American opinion.
The story of MTI must surely shake that complacency and demand a review of the profit-and-loss account in the safety versus liberty debate. And that must take in the effect the actions and views of a generation of middle-aged politicians, journalists and spies will have on people aged under 25, who may have to live with total surveillance under regimes that may be much less benign than the ones we know. As I have asked before, will my generation pass on a society that is substantially less free than the one we inherited, together with tools of oppression never before seen?
We are fond of saying that the younger generation doesn't know the meaning of the word privacy, but what you give away voluntarily and what the state takes are as different as charity and tax. Privacy is the defining quality of a free people. Snowden's compelling leaks show us that mastery of the internet will ineluctably mean mastery over the individual.



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