Database State

Christina Zaba (London, NO2ID): Since 4th January we’ve known it:  the UK police will soon be able to hack into people’s personal computers without a search warrant, in line with “EU initiatives against cybercrime”.

I know: it’s almost unbelievable. It makes a nonsense of the provisions within the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, whose own Codes of Practice state: “All [surveillance] activity should be carefully managed...and must not be arbitrary or unfair. Measures should be taken to avoid or minimise unnecessary intrusion into the lives of those not directly connected with the investigation.”

David Erdos (Oxford, CSLS): The Convention on Modern Liberty scheduled for next February 28  has the potential to be a defining moment for the UK.  The ad hoc team putting it together have assembled an exciting array of prominent figures allied to all the main political parties and to none.  More important, the Convention will examine many pressing issues facing us in the area of human rights and executive power. Nevertheless, I am troubled. Those creating the Convention seem to have conceptualized the issue of privacy/data protection so that only one aspect of it is given any emphasis.

Tom Griffin (London, OK):Disquiet about Metropolitan Police tactics towards political demonstrations has grown in recent months, not least in the wake of events in London during George Bush's visit in June and in Kent during the Climate Camp in August. The latest revelation from campaign group FITWatch will only add to those concerns:

A Forward Intelligence Team (FIT) officer this week admitted publicly that he entered data from FIT operations onto a centrally operated database. This is the first time the Met has publicly acknowledged the existence a database containing details of people involved in political protest.

The admission is significant because this database would hold a great deal of sensitive information about an individual’s political activity. The accumulation of information by the police on a person’s political affiliations or beliefs is a very sensitive area, and potentially a breach of the Human Rights Act.

Phil Booth (London, NO2ID): At a conference in Manchester organised by the Information Commissioner twelve months ago, NO2ID raised a wry smile from delegates by handing out pairs of (blank) CDs marked 'HMRC'. A year on, it is no joking matter that so little has been done by the government to address the systemic and policy failures - and internal culture - that led to the worst data breach in UK history.

In fact, government data breaches are on the rise - a 77 per cent increase so far this year - and almost every branch of government is involved: the Home Office, MoD, NHS, DWP, HMRC again (repeatedly), the list goes on and on. Every week there is another story of more people's personal details being mislaid, citizens put at risk by a government that not only can't protect them but which doesn't seem particularly bothered to do so. The scale of the problem 12 months on is so great that the Information Commissioner himself has quipped that his office is being used like a confessional.

Christina Zaba (London, NO2ID): So now we know that Gordon Brown doesn't much care about the safety of "every single item of information" we hand over to the government, as he told ITN last Sunday in the wake of yet another data breach.

It's the scale of the information gathered that interests him. Who cares if it's your particular NHS records, bank details, fingerprints, iris scan, benefit entitlements or shopping habits that fall into the wrong hands? Forget data protection: this is the era of data-sharing. 

The policy was devised some time ago. Tony Blair published the idea in 2005, in Transformational Government: Enabled by Technology, when he promised a "balance" between government "maintaining the privacy of the individual" and "delivering services". But it's government, not you and I, who will be deciding that balance. 

Picking up in Comment Is Free on the Prime Minister's staggering admission which was otherwise ignored across the media (why is this?) David Davis compellingly and eloquently argues that the proposed National Identity Register is obviously, stupidly insecure. It's designed that way. You don't need to be a hacker to get into a system which gathers everything on giant linked databases, open to hundreds of thousands of officials. You just need a password.

And what could be simpler, once we're all on the Register and our detailed information and biometrics are in the hands of the state, than to render someone functionally non-existent at the flick of a switch?

Let's not go there. Our information is ours and, as David Davis says, naïve ministers are disastrously missing the point. No system exists anywhere on the planet which could secure every single, precious, personal item of information on the National Identity Register, therefore it must not be built. As we say in NO2ID: You can't protect it, so don't collect it. End of story.

Christina Zaba is Union Liaison Officer for NO2ID

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): The V in TV now stands for vacuum not vision. I watched this evening's Panorama followed by the much trailed part I of John Prescott on class. There was a time when the BBC's "flagship" programme was an hour. Now it is 30 minutes and much of this is dedicated to atmospheric cutaways - all drama and little thought.

Tonight's was a first on the database state but jumped from data losses, to the ECAF monitoring of children, to the ANPR tracking of all car movements, with fragmented discussion of a single, central database. There was no discussion of a national information register, nothing on ID cards. It was designed to alarm not explain. There was no analysis. It was out to lunch when it came to reporting on why total surveillance was happening and what the consequences might be if it works. Sometimes I have the feeling that a report has been carried, a story 'run', with the main purpose of being able to say that the issue was "covered" and not censored or ignored. However, it is a form of death by kindness, a form of quasi-cover-up - tucking up the duvet rather than uncovering the body below it. 

Tom Griffin (London, OK): The database state is moving forward at an increasing pace, but it is not inevitable, and there are far better ways of dealing with the identity challenges of the information age. That was the conclusion that emerged from a Rowntrees Governance Seminar on the subject at Westminster on Wednesday.

In the opening presentation Phil Booth of NO2ID defined the database state as "using computers to manage society by watching people."

He suggested that the Government has lost the argument on every front, but was developing a narrative that the database state is inevitable. Stressing that those who oppose the Government's plans are not Luddites, he said that, in many cases, their technical awareness exceeds that of the Home Office. Booth outlined three approaches that offer an alternative way forward.

• Information privity: a new sort of enforceable property right, with some of
  the features of confidentiality, but extending to all personal information.
  Analagous to leases of property or licenses of copyright, which occur
  through a chain of contracts - each of which gives specific, limited rights
  to the recipient, no rights to those outside the chain and direct redress
  against any infringer.
• Authentication/verification rather than identification: In many cases it is only necessary to verify one particular fact about a person. This can be achieved by a market of overlapping identity tokens, rather than putting all our eggs in one basket as with a centralised database.
• Precisely targeting problems: for example by allowing people to freeze their own credit records, a radical departure from the database state approach which has already been applied in the United States.

Booth stressed that individual control, choice and consent were vital principles: "In an information society things done to your data can have as much effect as things done to you in person. We have to get this right now."

Phil Booth (London, NO2ID): The mainstream media has finally woken up to the dangers of the government's proposed Communications Data database – the detail of which openDemocracy published back in August.

As National Coordinator of NO2ID I suppose I should be grateful for small mercies. But this hardly includes the thin sugar-coating on the Home Secretary's speech last week when she described her promised 'consultation' on the Communications Data Bill. Hers was a transparent attempt to misdirect the argument.

The government says it won't be storing the content of your telephone or internet use, as if that makes it all right. It is however proposing to record – for life – the details of everyone you call or write to and what websites you visit.

Do you want the State (which in the UK means a large and growing number who can gain access to its systems) to have a record of your religious and political interests, your sexual curiosities, your financial and medical worries, your wider (or narrower) concerns and your special relationships; not to mention a trace of what it reckons ‘you’ have done on your computer even when it is done by someone else? You don’t?

Guy Aitchison (London, OK): The following remark by Geoff Hoon, which was directed at Lib Dem MP Julia Goldsworthy on tonight's Question Time, lays bare the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the Government's case for the database state:

If they are going to use the internet to communicate with each other and we don't have the power to deal with that, then you are giving a licence to terrorists to kill people

So now, it would seem, not only are opponents of the Govenment's draconian laws "ignoring" terrorism, as Jacqui Smith claimed following the 42 days climbdown, they are actively giving "licence" to "terrorists to kill people"! If this rhetorical turn tells us anything it's just how low the Government is prepared to stoop to bully these measures through.    

Update: I'm currently watching News 24 where a Fabian Society apologist is attempting to justify Hoon's outrageous remarks. So far her arguments - "I don't mind if the Government knows if I phoned my son this afternoon" - have failed to convince...

See also UK Liberty

Tom Griffin (London, OK): There's still time to get your camera out if you want to take part in a major Europe-wide protest against the database state this Saturday:

NO2ID have teamed up with the Open Rights Group to show Parliament the 'Big Picture' by constructing a giant image made out of thousands of pictures taken by UK citizens of surveillance state ephemera. YOU can join this protest from anywhere in the UK by simply sending us a photo. We would like you to send us a picture of 'the database state' in YOUR life. We want images of the signs of mass surveillance, and any form of intrusive ID or state control - cameras, cards, scanners, forms, whatever you like.

Photos should be sent to FreedomNotFear@no2id.net. Some of those already submitted can be seen on this Flickr page.

Tom Griffin (London, OK): The security services are pushing for a massive expansion of electronic surveillance in the UK, in the face of opposition from the Treasury and the Cabinet Office, according to the Sunday Times:

The scope of the project - classified top secret - is said by officials to be so vast that it will dwarf the estimated £5 billion ministers have set aside for the identity cards programme. It is intended to fight terrorism and crime. Civil liberties groups, however, say it poses an unprecedented intrusion into ordinary citizens’ lives.

Aimed at placing a “live tap” on every electronic communication in Britain, it will dwarf other “big brother” surveillance projects such as the number plate recognition system and the spread of CCTV.

Pepper and his opposite number at MI6, Sir John Scarlett, are facing opposition from mandarins in the Treasury and Cabinet Office who fear both its cost and ethical implications. 

Edvige would organise data on the religious, political and philosophical beliefs, ethnic background, sex lives and health of an estimated 1m-2m people. It would contain information about their families and relationships. That is more information than French people were comfortable with giving up. Opposition gathered quietly over the summer – quietly enough that President Nicolas Sarkozy seems to have been taken by surprise. Dozens of associations and unions and 140,000 petition-signers now demand that Edvige be scrapped or modified, and a day of mobilisation has been planned for October 16 in case it is not.

The petition now has over 166,000 supporters and has an English translation in Facebook. Caldwell descibes some of the larger forces at work. It seems clear that the transformation of the state which the British government has embarked upon under Brown is not unique. But here in the UK there is still a passive acceptance that 'they' can get away with it, perhaps rooted in our knowing in our hearts that we are subjects. Whereas across the Channel a shared sense of citizenship means the government is already on the retreat under a blizzard of protest with Cabinet members disagreeing with each in public over a fundamental issue of principle. If only... 

Tom Griffin (London, OK): The Government is determined to press ahead with its e-borders plan to count travellers in an out of the UK, despite running into problems with the European Union, The Guardian reports this morning.

A draft European agreement would allow the collection of 'Passenger Name Records' (PNR) data, but only for the purpose of fighting terrorism and organised crime.

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Passport checks between Britain and Northern Ireland are set to be introduced as part of the e-borders scheme, the Irish Times reported on Monday.

The changes will be fiercely unpopular with unionists, who have argued that it means they will be treated as second-class citizens within the United Kingdom.

Passport and other identity checks will be introduced between the Republic and Great Britain - but not between the Republic and Northern Ireland - from 2009 for air travellers, and the following year for those travelling by sea under London's e-borders security system.

Stuart Weir (Cambridge, Democratic Audit): There is a surreal ironist in the Home Office.

BBC News is trumpeting an investigation into rogue illegal immigrants who are apparently able to re-produce practically any official document anyone might need, from passports, driving licences down to gas and electricity bills. But what is the Home Office doing about this plague of illegality?

"That what ID cards are for" Did I hear right?

"Sometimes the best-intentioned plans bring the most insidious threats, where freedoms are not appreciated until it is too late to turn the clock back," Information Commissioner Richard Thomas warned in his annual report released today.

The targeted, and duly authorised, interception of the communications of suspects can be invaluable in the fight against terrorism and other serious crime. But would that provide justification for the scheme which - it has been suggested - is under consideration to create a government-run database to hold details of the telephone and internet communications of the entire population? Do we really want the police, security services and other organs of the state to have access to more and more aspects of our private lives? Any such scheme would require the fullest public debate to establish whether, whatever the benefits, it amounted to excessive surveillance as a step too far for the British way of life.

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): The cost of Britain's surveillance society has reached £20 billion according to a report by the TaxPayers Alliance released today. The bill includes £19 billion for ID cards, £500 million for CCTV and £300 million for the DNA database.

Jon Bright (London, OK): A couple of news items on police technology caught the eye today. Following criticism in the Omagh Bomb trial, the BBC reports that a review undertaken on behalf of the home office has confirmed that "Low Copy Number" DNA testing is "scientifically sound" and can continue to be used in police investigations. And the Telegraph reveals that every Metropolitan police office will soon be fitted with an electronic "tag" which will allow their commanding office to pinpoint their location (overground or underground) anywhere with in London, ostensibly for the purposes of their protection.

Henry Porter reports for us from last night's No2ID mayoral hustings.

Henry Porter (London, journalist): Under Ken Livingstone, London has become the most watched city in the free world; but he did not take the opportunity presented by these mayoral hustings to explain why he supports the surveillance by ANPR cameras outside congestion charging hours, the enormous increase in camera systems, or the retention of Oyster card data, which connect personal details with credit cards and travel information. Perhaps this is unsurprising since Livingstone is strongly in favour of ID cards and the National Identity Register, and he is on record as saying he wants thousands more cameras installed in the run up to the London Olympics in 2012.

Jon Bright (London, OK): A quick reminder about two No2ID events happening tonight.

In Manchester a debate entitled - "Towards a Universal DNA Database" :

Time: 7pm Place: Museum of Science and Industry (map). Click here for details and registration