Category Archives: Legal issues

Security-related legislation, government initiatives, court cases

Why privacy regulators are ineffective: an anthropologist's view

Academic papers, Legal issues, Politics, Security economics, Security psychology

Privacy activists have complained for years that the Information Commissioner is useless, and compared him with captured regulators like the FSA and the Financial Ombudsman. However I’ve come across a paper by a well-known anthropologist that gives a different take on the problem.

Alan Fiske did fieldwork among a tribe in northern Nigeria that has different boundaries for which activities are regulated by communal sharing, authority, tit-for-tat or monetary exchange. For example,labour within the village is always communal; you expect your neighbours to help you fix your house, and you later help them fix theirs. (This exasperated colonialists who couldn’t get the locals to work for cash; the locals for their part imagined that Europeans must present their children with an itemised bill for child-rearing when they reached adulthood.) He has since written several papers on how many of the tensions in human society arise on the boundaries of these domains of sharing, authority, tit-for-tat and the market. The boundaries can vary by culture, by generation and by politics; libertarians are happy to buy and sell organs for transplant, where many people prefer communal sharing, while radical socialists object to some routine market transactions. Indeed regulatory preferences may drive political views.

So far so good. Where it gets interesting is his extensive discussion of taboo transactions across a variety of cultures, and the institutions created to mitigate the discomfort that people feel when something affects more than one sphere of regulation: from extreme cases such as selling a child into slavery so you can feed your other children, through bride-price and blood money, to such everyday things as alimony and deconsecrating a cemetery for development. It turns out there’s a hierarchy of spheres, with sharing generally taking precedence over authority and authority over tit-for-tat, and market pricing following along last. This ordering makes “downhill” transactions easier. Alimony works (you once loved me, so pay me money!) but buying love doesn’t. Continue reading Why privacy regulators are ineffective: an anthropologist's view →

Internet Censorship and Control

Academic papers, Internet censorship, Legal issues, Politics, Privacy technology

The Internet is and has always been a space where participants battle for control. The two core protocols that define the Internet – TCP and IP – are both designed to allow separate networks to connect to each other easily, so that networks that differ not only in hardware implementation (wired vs. satellite vs. radio networks) but also in their politics of control (consumer vs. research vs. military networks) can interoperate easily. It is a feature of the Internet, not a bug, that China – with its extensive, explicit censorship infrastructure – can interact with the rest of the Internet.

Today we have released an open-access collection (also published as a special issue of IEEE Internet Computing), of five peer reviewed papers on the topic of Internet censorship and control, edited by Hal Roberts and myself (Steven Murdoch). The topics of the papers include a broad look at information controls, censorship of microblogs in China, new modes of online censorship, the balance of power in Internet governance, and control in the certificate authority model.

These papers make it clear that there is no global consensus on what mechanisms of control are best suited for managing conflicts on the Internet, just as there is none for other fields of human endeavour. That said, there is optimism that with vigilance and continuing efforts to maintain transparency the Internet can stay as a force for increasing freedom than a tool for more efficient repression.

Traceability in the Queen's Speech

Legal issues, News coverage, Politics

The Queen’s speech at today’s state opening of Parliament includes the prediction:

“In relation to the problem of matching Internet protocol addresses, my Government will bring forward proposals to enable the protection of the public and the investigation of crime in cyberspace”

This is all that remains of the Home Office’s ambition to bring forward a revised version of the Draft Communications Data Bill that two Parliamentary Select Committees were so unimpressed by, and which the Liberal Democrats have declined to support.

The sole issue on which there appears to be political consensus is that “something must be done” about the traceability failure that regularly occurs when the Internet is accessed from a smartphone. The shortage of IPv4 addresses means that the mobile companies cannot give each smartphone a unique IP address — so hundreds of users share the same IP address with only the TCP/UDP source port number distinguishing their traffic. Because this sharing is done very dynamically the mobile phone companies find it problematic to record the source port mapping, and they have argued that the way the EU Data Retention Directive is written they have no obligation to make and keep such records.

I wrote about this issue at some length on this blog in January 2010, although until very recently the Home Office considered it to be tantamount to a state secret and were extremely coy about discussing it in the public.

The Queen’s “bring forward proposals” phrase appears to cover a range of options:

  • the mobile companies decide that they can manage to log the source port mapping data after all;
  • the Home Office pays for new kit at the mobile companies that will allow source port mapping to be done;
  • there is a short bill (or clause in another bill) that requires the logging to be done (this might avoid any question of payments being ultra vires, or would ensure compliance by companies (possibly broadband suppliers) that looked like becoming stragglers;
  • there are discussions but nothing happens at all — perhaps because the tide turns against Data Retention as being a necessary and proportionate policy. A number of other EU countries have found it to be incompatible with fundamental human rights.

The Open Rights Group (ORG) have recently produced a pamphlet (available online here) setting out how surveillance might be better approached in this century. I contributed the chapter on the technical issues…

… if you don’t have time to read the whole thing then the New Statesman has an edited version of my chapter; and you can watch a short video of myself (and two other contributors) explaining the major issues.

How Privacy is Lost

Legal issues, News coverage, Politics, Privacy technology

On Friday I went to a fascinating lobbying meeting on the new EU data protection regulation. Europe is by default the world’s privacy regulator, as America doesn’t care and no-one else is big enough to matter; so this is really important. Some 3000 amendments have been proposed and the regulation is in the final stages of the committee process; the rapporteurs of the various parties are negotiating compromise amendments which should be ready for a vote within weeks. So the pressure is really on.

Friday was extraordinary because all the lobbyists came together in one room to argue their cases. This is because the liberal shadow rapporteur Alexander Alvaro was injured in a car crash last month, so Sarah Ludford, a London MEP, took over at the last minute. Normally lobbyists see MEPs singly or in small groups, but as time was short Sarah called a mass meeting at Europa House in London. So we all got to hear what the others were pushing for. Campaigners for open government say we’d have better laws if more if the process was public; here’s an example where that happened (literally) by accident.

I am posting my notes of the meeting here, as it’s a good case history of how lobbying works, as well as of how our privacy is being lost. There were about 100 people present, of which only 5 were from civil society. Most were corporate lobbyists: good-looking, articulate and impressive, but pushing some jaw-dropping agendas. For example the lovely lady from the Association of British Insurers found it painful that the regulation might ban profiling that was unfair or discriminatory.

Continue reading How Privacy is Lost →

Liveblog – MedConfidential.org launch

Legal issues, News coverage, Politics, Security economics

I’m at the launch in London of the new campaign for medical privacy, MedConfidential.org. Sam Smith and I will be liveblogging the day’s events in comments below. For background, see here, here, here and here. Most of today’s audience are from groups for whom medical privacy is particularly important, such as charities dealing with rape victims, substance abuse, sexual health and child wefare.

Should we boycott John Lewis?

Authentication, Legal issues, News coverage, Politics, Security economics, Security psychology

Last weekend, my wife and I were in Milton Keynes where we bought a cradle as a present for our new granddaughter. They had only the demo model in the shop, but sold us one to pick up from their store in Cambridge. So yesterday I went into John Lewis with the receipt, to be told by the official that as I couldn’t show the card with which the purchase was made, they needed photo-id. I told him that along with over a million others I’d resisted the previous government’s ID card proposals, the last government had lost the election, and I didn’t carry ID on principle. The response was the usual nonsense: that I should have read the terms and conditions (but when I studied the receipt later it said nothing about ID) and that he was just doing his job (but John Lewis prides itself on being employee-owned, so in theory at least he is a partner in the firm). I won’t be shopping there again anytime soon.

We get harassed more and more by security theatre, by snooping and by bullying. What’s the best way to push back? Why can businesses be so pointlessly annoying?

Perhaps John Lewis are consciously pro-Labour given their history as a co-op; but it’s not prudent to advertise that in a three-way marginal like Cambridge, let alone in the leafy southern suburbs where they make most of their money. Or perhaps it’s just incompetence. When my wife phoned later to complain, the customer services people apologised and said we should have been told when we bought the thing that we’d need to show ID. She offered to post the cradle to our daughter, but then rung back later to say they’d lost the order and would need our paperwork. So that’s another 30-mile round-trip to their depot. But if they’re incompetent, why should I trust them enough to buy their food?

I invite the chairman, Charlie Mayfield, to explain by means of a follow-up to this post whether this was policy or cockup. Will he continue to demand photo-id even from customers who have a principled objection? Will he tell us who in the firm imposed this policy, and show us the training material that was prepared to ensure that counter staff would explain it properly to customers?

New medical confidentiality campaign

Legal issues, News coverage, Politics, Privacy technology

Regular readers of this blog will have noticed growing issues with medical privacy. On April 24th, a new medical confidentiality campaign will kick off in London.

New legislation that comes into force next month will permit the upload of identifiable patient data directly from family doctors’ records to central systems, from which it will be sold and made available to researchers and private companies. Other developments include the creation of online patient records, and a proposal to create shared record systems across health and social care.

MedConfidential has been formed to deal with these multiple threats to patient privacy, and is hosting its first conference on April 24th in central London. This will be a one-day briefing session to provide details of the new policies and explain their potential impact. The conference is free of charge but places are limited. If you would like to attend, please contact Terri Dowty: terri@medconfidential.org

Dangerous Blogs Act

Legal issues, News coverage, Politics

The UK Government are currently in a tremendous rush to legislate (and create a Royal Charter) before the political consensus around “implementing Leveson” evaporates. Their proposals catch not just the print media, but also online publications. That’s only proper — a newspaper should meet the same integrity standards for their journalism whether it appears in ink and paper, or on their website.

However, the Governments approach has not been to describe the activity that they wish to regulate, but to describe the various media involved and then try to write exceptions to avoid regulating the whole Internet. Those exceptions are poorly thought out and will have all sorts of unintended consequences. They might even include this blog!
Continue reading Dangerous Blogs Act →

Health record privacy in Scotland

Legal issues, News coverage, Politics, Privacy technology, Security economics

Last week I spoke at a conference on digital health at the Scottish parliament. The talks are now online; my talk is here, and my slides here. At present, medical records in Scotland are organised differently under its fourteen different health boards, with wide variations in privacy, safety and functionality. Needless to say, officials in Edinburgh see this as an opportunity for centralisation; they want to follow the sad story in England. The political dynamic north of the border is much the same: officials want to grab all the data, GPs are not keen, but the public’s not paying attention.

If you’re interested in these issues, save April 24th in your diary; there will be a big medical privacy event in London organised by a number of NGOs.

EU cyber security directive considered harmful

Legal issues, News coverage, Politics, Security economics

Yesterday the European Commission launched its new draft directive on cybersecurity, on a webpage which omits a negative Opinion of the Impact Assessment Board. This directive had already been widely leaked, and I wrote about it in an EDRi Enditorial. There are at least two serious problems with it.

The first is that it will oblige Member States to set up single “competent authorities” for technical expertise, international liasion, security breach reporting and CERT functions. In the UK, these functions are distributed across GCHQ, MI5/CPNI, the new NCA, the ICO and various private-sector bodies. And the UK is relatively centralised; in Germany, for example, there’s a constitutional separation between police and intelligence functions. Centralisation will not just damage the separation of powers essential in any democracy, but will also harm operational effectiveness. Most of our critical infrastructure is in the hands of foreign companies, from O2 through EDF to Google; moving cybersecurity cooperation from the current loose association of private-public partnerships to a centralised, classified system will make it harder for most of them to play.

Second, whereas security-breach notification laws in the USA require firms to report breaches to affected citizens, articles 14 and 15 instead require breach notification to the “competent authority”. Notification requirements can be changed later by order (14.5-7) and the “competent authorities” only have to tell us if they determine it’s in the “public interest” (14.4). So instead of empowering us, it will empower the spooks. But that’s not all. Member States must “ensure that the competent authorities have the power to require market operators and public administrations to: (a) provide information needed to assess the security of their networks and information systems, including documented security policies; and (b) undergo a security audit carried out by a qualified independent body or national authority and make the results thereof available to the competent authority” (15.2). States must also “ensure that competent authorities have the power to issue binding instructions to market operators and public administrations” (15.3) Now as Parliament has just criticised the Home Office’s attempt to take powers to order firms like Google and Facebook to disclose user data by means of the Communications Data Bill, I hope everyone will think long and hard about the implications of passing this Directive as it stands. It’s yet another unfortunate step towards the militarisation of cyberspace.