Liberties Report - July 12, 2014
Channel: Liberty Talk
Date: 2014-07-12

Liberties Report for July 12, 2014. On Data Retention, an ISP who refuses to comply with surveillance laws, and self-censorship.

Full transcript of report:


Good evening and welcome to Liberties Report, July 12. The United Kingdom's political majority has decided to reinstate something called Data Retention, which is a term so bureaucratic it can kill small animals just with overwhelming boredom. What it means, though, is that all your communications and every footstep through the city will be logged to use against you. This is typical for any government: create something horrible and give it a bureaucratic label so mindnumbingly boring that people will get chronic sleep disease just by trying to read its name.

Let's take that again: everybody you contact and every footstep you take through the city will be logged, with the express purpose of using it against you at some point in the future. Let that sink in for a minute. There has actually been a Europe-wide directive requiring such national laws, which the European Court of Justice smote in fire, flames, and lightning this summer, saying it "interferes in a particularly serious manner with the fundamental rights to respect for private life", which translates from legalese into "this idea is so awful it should be taken out the back and shot".

Nevertheless, the administration of the United Kingdom is now passing this sweeping mass surveillance law in an emergency, but as a national law initiative rather than a European directive. The BBC has kindly provided footage of the raging debate in British Parliament, and it's hard to not escape the feeling that all promised so-called "safeguards" are just the usual political hot air.

Sweden has been doing the exact same thing, rapidly shifting political feet from "the European Union is forcing us" to "well, we decide Swedish law anyway". This may have been a mistake. A small liberty-oriented ISP in Sweden named Bahnhof is blankly refusing to comply with Swedish national data retention laws, and has filed a police report against themselves for this, thereby forcing the government's hand. Bahnhof is counting on appealing and escalating the matter of the national data retention laws to the European Court of Justice, which has already said the idea should be taken out and shot. Thus, the tenacity and bravery of a small ISP in Sweden may be our best hope for liberties in this matter, and they have the potential to kill this mass surveillance Europe-wide.

It's not that this mass surveillance is particularly efficient for its exorbitant cost: the most favorable studies say it's been useful only in 0.002% of cases - in other words, you are getting the efficiency of one and a half extra investigating policeman for the price of five hundred thousand extra such policemen. What a bargain!

At the same time, people are getting scared into submission by being watched, scared into [X] self-censorship. In Germany, over half of people surveyed responded that they would refrain from taking contacts we want people to take, because it could be used against them in the future: drug helplines, suicide hotlines, even marriage counseling and ordinary therapists. Over ten percent had already refrained from doing so.

So if effective law enforcement isn't the purpose, what is? We know that thanks to activists breaking into surveillance FBI offices a few decades back, using the most devious scheme imaginable to break in to a locked FBI vault, which was putting a note on the vault door saying "Please leave this door unlocked tonight". On reviewing the surveillance files, it turned out that the "organized crime" justification was a mere 1% of the surveillance targets - mostly gambling. Almost half were ordinary citizens who should just be scared into submission by self-censorship.

Let's take that again, because it is hugely important: self-censorship is not some acceptable collateral damage of the mass surveillance. Self-censorship, refraining from rocking the boat, has been its purpose.

This is why it is important that the US spy agency NSA has been spying on ordinary civilians' phonecalls, browsing, and videocalls, and that 90% of their targets have been ordinary people. It was not by accident, but by design. Where we go from here is up to us.

I am Rick Falkvinge, and this is Liberties Report. Good night.