07 Jun 13 | Digital Freedom
It’s been a rocky week for government surveillance and freedom of expression, Brian Pellot writes
On Tuesday, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression Frank La Rue delivered a report to the Human Rights Council outlining how state and corporate surveillance undermine freedom of expression and privacy. The report traces how state monitoring has kept pace with new technological developments and describes how states are “lowering the threshold and increasing the justifications” for surveillance, both domestically and beyond their own borders.
The true depths of this lowered threshold were exposed on Thursday, when The Guardian revealed that the US National Security Agency has been collecting call records of Verizon’s millions of subscribers. Things got worse on Friday when reports alleged the same agency can access the servers of Google, Facebook, Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft and others to monitor users’ video calls, search histories, live chats, and emails. It was long one of Washington’s worst kept secrets that data about our communications (call logs, times, locations, etc.) were being monitored, but the revelation that the government has granted itself, without democratic consent, the ability to monitor the actual contents of our communications is appalling.
Related: ‘Mass surveillance is never justified’ — Kirsty Hughes, Index on Censorship CEO
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Caught in the Web: How free are we online?
The internet: free open space, wild wild west, or totalitarian state? However you view the web, in today’s world it is bringing both opportunities and threats for free expression — and ample opportunity for government surveillance
Mass surveillance programmes have awful implications for freedom of expression. Index on Censorship made this clear in regards to the UK’s proposed Communications Data Bill last year. States should only limit freedom of expression when absolutely necessary to preserve national security or public order. In such exceptional cases, limits on expression should be transparent, limited and proportionate. La Rue’s latest report adds that states should not retain information purely for surveillance purposes. The US programmes revealed this week grossly violate all of these principles.
Surveillance is, by its very definition, a violation of privacy. La Rue’s report rightly states that “Privacy and freedom of expression are interlinked and mutually dependent; an infringement upon one can be both the cause and consequence of an infringement upon the other.” Without some guarantee or at least a (false) assumption of privacy online, we cannot and will not express ourselves freely. Mass surveillance programmes directly chill free speech and give rise to self-censorship.
If the top secret documents outlining these programmes were leaked, what’s to stop our top secret personal information, that which is being monitored by government agencies, from being exposed? These programmes and even more extreme efforts to limit freedom of expression online in other states are unjustified, disproportionate, secretive and often without adequate limits. La Rue’s report calls for national laws around state surveillance to be revised in accordance with human rights standards.
Brian Pellot is Digital Policy Advisor at Index on Censorship.
19 Mar 13 | Newswire
The potential for communication brought about by the web is matched only by its potential as a surveillance tool. UN Rapporteur on free expression Frank La Rue recently announced that his next report will be on state surveillance and the web. In the UK, the government has vowed to reintroduce the Communications Data Bill, known commonly as the “snooper’s charter” which aims to give the authorities unprecedented powers to store, monitor and search private data. In Australia, the government has proposed similar powers and also suggested social networks should allow back-door surveillance of users.
It’s not just state gathering of data that worries people, of course. Many people object to the hoovering up and monetisation of data posted on public and private networks by the many private web companies whose services so many of us now use.
The right to privacy and the right to free expression often go hand in hand. Surveillance is bound to curtail what we say, and enable what we say to be used against us.
In Stockholm last week, Google brought together experts from politics, business, policing and civil liberties to discuss the complex intermingling of free speech, security and surveillance online.
Hosted in a former church overlooking Stockholm Harbour, the latest “Big Tent” event was kicked off with a discussion between Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt and Google’s Global Head of Free Expression Ross Lajeunesse.
Bildt raised a laugh while voicing confusion over the safety of “cloud computing”, asking “Where is the bloody cloud?”
But Lajeunesse insisted that cloud computing is the best way to guarantee safety from hacking and theft, adding that Google’s gmail is encrypted in an effort to protect users from surveillance.
Discussing China’s method’s of web censorship and surveillance (Read Index’s China correspondent here), Bildt put forward the interesting proposition that the authorities use of “50 cent party” a network of thousands of civilians paid to post pro government content in web conversations, was perhaps a sign the authorities had admitted that censorship had failed, as the government seemed to have conceded that you know had to argue your case rather than censor others.
Lajeunesse was hopeful for Chinese web users, simply saying that 700 milllion people who want access to information cannot be held back.
The reasoning behind state surveillance was discussed in a later panel. After Francesca Bosco, of the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute gave a frankly terrifying account of cyber crime and web security (in brief, there’s a lot of crime and no real security), Brian Donald of Europol discussed the need for surveillance, citing examples of tracking people engaged in the trade of images of child sexual abuse. He countered fears of dragnet surveillance expressed by Eva Galperin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Jacob Mchangama of Danish civil liberties group CEPOS, saying that he was in fact limited in his powers to fight crime by European data protection laws.
Galperin and Mchangama both also expressed concern over the policing and surveillance of not just of crime, but of speech online (a subject of considerable debate in the UK).
It seems like the back-and-forth on these issues will not be resolved any time soon. Security, surveillance and free speech have always been intertwined. But mass use of the web, as our lives move online, makes the debate on achieving a balance all the more urgent.
19 Mar 13 | Uncategorized
The potential for communication brought about by the web is matched only by its potential as a surveillance tool. UN Rapporteur on free expression Frank La Rue recently announced that his next report will be on state surveillance and the web. In the UK, the government has vowed to reintroduce the Communications Data Bill, known commonly as the “snooper’s charter” which aims to give the authorities unprecedented powers to store, monitor and search private data. In Australia, the government has proposed similar powers and also suggested social networks should allow back-door surveillance of users.
It’s not just state gathering of data that worries people, of course. Many people object to the hoovering up and monetisation of data posted on public and private networks by the many private web companies whose services so many of us now use.
The right to privacy and the right to free expression often go hand in hand. Surveillance is bound to curtail what we say, and enable what we say to be used against us.
In Stockholm last week, Google brought together experts from politics, business, policing and civil liberties to discuss the complex intermingling of free speech, security and surveillance online.
Hosted in a former church overlooking Stockholm Harbour, the latest “Big Tent” event was kicked off with a discussion between Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt and Google’s Global Head of Free Expression Ross Lajeunesse.
Bildt raised a laugh while voicing confusion over the safety of “cloud computing”, asking “Where is the bloody cloud?”
But Lajeunesse insisted that cloud computing is the best way to guarantee safety from hacking and theft, adding that Google’s gmail is encrypted in an effort to protect users from surveillance.
Discussing China’s method’s of web censorship and surveillance (Read Index’s China correspondent here), Bildt put forward the interesting proposition that the authorities use of “50 cent party” a network of thousands of civilians paid to post pro government content in web conversations, was perhaps a sign the authorities had admitted that censorship had failed, as the government seemed to have conceded that you know had to argue your case rather than censor others.
Lajeunesse was hopeful for Chinese web users, simply saying that 700 milllion people who want access to information cannot be held back.
The reasoning behind state surveillance was discussed in a later panel. After Francesca Bosco, of the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute gave a frankly terrifying account of cyber crime and web security (in brief, there’s a lot of crime and no real security), Brian Donald of Europol discussed the need for surveillance, citing examples of tracking people engaged in the trade of images of child sexual abuse. He countered fears of dragnet surveillance expressed by Eva Galperin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Jacob Mchangama of Danish civil liberties group CEPOS, saying that he was in fact limited in his powers to fight crime by European data protection laws.
Galperin and Mchangama both also expressed concern over the policing and surveillance of not just of crime, but of speech online (a subject of considerable debate in the UK).
It seems like the back-and-forth on these issues will not be resolved any time soon. Security, surveillance and free speech have always been intertwined. But mass use of the web, as our lives move online, makes the debate on achieving a balance all the more urgent.
06 Jul 11 | Index Index, minipost
US-based Cisco Systems Inc and Hewlett-Packard, along with a handful of other Western technology companies, are set to provide crucial network equipment for a massive CCTV surveillance project in the city of Chongqing. Known as “Peaceful Chongqing” the network of about 500,000 cameras will spread over nearly 400 square miles, it will police intersections, neighborhoods and parks. Chinese officials say the added surveillance will prevent crime but human-rights advocates fear it will be used to silence political dissidents.
