We held a live Google hangout with Trevor Timm of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Rebecca Mackinnon of Gloval Voices discussed what mass surveillance means to all of us as individuals. Hosted by Padraig Reidy of Index, the 30-minute event explored in the issues around government surveillance of innocent civilians.
Trevor Timm is an activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He specializes in surveillance, free speech, and government transparency issues.
Rebecca Mackinnon is a Bernard L. Schwartz Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation. Mackinnon is the author of Consent of the Networked.
Venue Doughty Street Chambers,
54 Doughty Street
London, WC1N 2LS (map) Time 6.30pm RSVP[email protected] Space is limited, so please reserve a place early
Edward Snowden’s leaks about the US’s international mass surveillance programmes has prompted perhaps the definitive debate of our age: How free are we online? Can we ever trust technology with our personal details?
Have democratic freedoms been subverted by surveillance programmes such as PRISM and Tempora, justified on the grounds of security?
Join Index on Censorship and Doughty Street Chambers on 25 July to discuss these issues and more.
The revelations that the United States allegedly spied on European Union diplomats marks a low in what should be a special relationship of trust between major democracies. The EU needs to remind the US that surveillance is unacceptable in the digital age.
The row was prompted by revelations published by German magazine Der Spiegel on its website this past Saturday. Relying on documents allegedly leaked by the former NSA-contractor Edward Snowden, the magazine said the NSA had surveilled EU, French, German and Italian diplomatic offices in Washington and at the UN.
Instead of reminding US authorities of the EU belief in an open and free internet, Catherine Ashton, the high representative of the EU for foreign affairs and security policy, focused on the specific press reports, calling them a “matter for concern”. The European Union needs to reiterate its well-established position that “global connectivity should not be accompanied by censorship or mass surveillance.”
But French president Francois Hollande demanded the US stop its activities “immediately.” Later, the BBC reported that Hollande threatened to derail US-EU trade pact negotiations over the bugging scandal.
Germany’s government summoned the US ambassador to explain his country’s actions. Steffen Seibert, spokeperson for Chancellor Merkel, said that Germany wants “trust restored. We will clearly say that bugging friends is unacceptable.”
French foreign minister Laurent Fabius demanded an explanation “as soon as possible” after labelling the alleged spying unacceptable.
Martin Schulz, president of the EU Parliament warned that the allegations, if true, would have a “severe impact on the relations between the EU and the US. He demanded a fuller account of the Der Spiegel reports.
Thomas Drake, a former NSA employee turned whistleblower, who was prosecuted under the US espionage act tweeted today that the alleged spying had “little to do with classic eavesdropping. Instead, it’s closer to a complete structural acquisition of data”.
Index CEO Kirsty Hughes said:
“As disagreement grows between the EU and the US over surveillance, Index on Censorship calls for the EU to take a lead in condemning mass surveillance – which the EU’s cyberstrategy already warns against. We are also calling on the US government to acknowledge that the mass surveillance of citizens’ private communications is unacceptable and a threat to both privacy and freedom of expression.”
Against a backdrop of ongoing revelations around the US Prism programme, mass surveillance dominated the discussion at the Index on Censorship event Caught in the web: How free are we online? Brian Pellot reports
Index on Censorship brought together a panel of experts at King’s Place in London last night. Investigative journalist Heather Brooke, author and digital rights activist Cory Doctorow, media lawyer Paul Tweed, Index CEO Kirsty Hughes and chair David Aaronovitch discussed the threats to freedom of expression online.
Brooke, warned that as we increase our online expression, we “create a handy one-stop shop for snooping officials”. She also cautioned that concentrated power in secretive states is a far greater danger to humanity than unbridled free speech.
(Brooke, author of The Revolution will be Digitised, kindly joined the panel at the last minute, replacing Guardian data editor James Ball, who is currently in the US covering the developing Prism scandal)
Doctorow, co-founder of the hugely influential Boing Boing blog, said while he was pessimistic about the “Orwellian control” that digital technologies provide governments, he remains optimistic that such technologies can enable us to cooperate, coordinate and collaborate in unprecedented ways to seek positive social change.
Doctorow questioned the efficacy of overcollection of data, characterised by PRISM, saying that as an intelligence technique is “like pointing at a pixel with a hotdog”.
Belfast-based libel lawyer Tweed said that anonymity online enables speech that constitutes dangerous harassment. He argued that freedom of expression must be protected, but that controls are needed to prevent the undermining of reputation and privacy. He recounted examples from his practice of clients that are harassed and attacked on the web with very little recourse against “internet goliaths”.
“There has to be a button to protect the man on the street”, Tweed said.
Hughes discussed the emerging geopolitics of digital freedom, noting that while EU countries and the US are lobbying for the preservation of a multistakeholder model of internet governance, Russia, China and others are pushing for top-down government control. Some of the greatest threats to online freedom of expression she discussed are censorship in the form of firewalls and filters, laws criminalising offence, the privatisation of censorship and, of course, surveillance.
Aaronovitch fielded questions from audience members who were focused on government surveillance and censorship.
Doctorow claimed that web filters are a blunt and inefficient instrument, giving the example of Denmark’s secret child abuse filters, which leaks showed had blocked a huge amount of material that was not related to sexual imagery of children.
“Everyone knows web filters don’t work, but once used, removing them would be political suicide,” he said.
Brooke acknowledged that current laws are not keeping pace with technology but does not think new laws are the solution. More important is that “our fundamental values be translated into the digital age”, she said.
“Nothing to hide, nothing to fear is an arrogant statement”, Brooke commented on UK foreign secretary William Hague’s response to questions on PRISM on Sunday.
Hughes elaborated on a statement she made earlier in the day essentially saying that mass surveillance is an invasion of our right to privacy and a direct chill on free speech.
Index on Censorship has released a joint statement with English PEN, Privacy International and Open Rights Group condemning the use of national security to justify mass surveillance.
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