Murdoch –Up the Creek without a Paddle?
Following the News of the World scandal, Ibrahim Hasan offers a legal analysis of Sky News' hacking admittance
Rupert Murdoch - World Economic Forum Annual Meeting Davos 2009 CC-BY-SA World Economic Forum (Full Name) CC-BY-SA
Is the Sky about to fall in on Rupert Murdoch?
On 1st May 2012, the Culture Committee delivered its report into the phone hacking scandal at the News of World. It questioned journalists and bosses at the now-closed News of the World, as well as police and lawyers for hacking victims. Its report has concluded that Mr Murdoch exhibited "wilful blindness" to what was going on in News Corporation and "is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company.”
But it’s not just what went on at the News of the World which has caused concern. Another of the news outlets owned by the Murdoch empire stands accused of breaking the law in the pursuit of a good story. Where will it end? On 5th April 2012, Sky News admitted in a statement that it had hacked emails belonging to members of the public on two separate occasions.
One incident involved targeting the accounts of a suspected paedophile and his wife. The other one involved the “dead canoeist” John Darwin. His wife Anne collected more than £500,000 in life insurance payouts while he hid in their marital home. The pair were found guilty of the deception in 2008. In the run-up to the trial former Sky News managing editor Simon Cole agreed North of England correspondent Gerard Tubb could hack into Darwins’ Yahoo! email account. The full story can be read on the Guardian website.
The interesting aspect, from a legal perspective, is the legal repercussions for Sky News. It has stated:
“We stand by these actions as editorially justified and in the public interest.”
Note that it says editorially justified, not legally. As will be explained below, the offences involved do not contain a public interest defence.
Accessing a person’s computer (directly or remotely) without their consent to read their emails is a criminal offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990 which is punishable with a fine or a term of imprisonment of up to 12 months. Section 1 (1) of the Act contains the elements of the offence:
(1) A person is guilty of an offence if—
(a) he causes a computer to perform any function with intent to secure access to any program or data held in any computer or to enable any such access to be secured ;
(b) the access he intends to secure or to enable to be secured is unauthorised;
and
(c) he knows at the time when he causes the computer to perform the function that that is the case.
There is no public interest defence in the Computer Misuse Act. However section 11 states that no proceedings can be brought for a section 1 offence more than three years after the commission of the offence. Darwin’s emails were accessed in 2008 and therefore a prosecution under S.1 is not possible.
Sky may also have committed a criminal offence under Section 1 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000(RIPA). Here there is not time limit for a prosecution. The Guardian reports:
“The broadcaster also published a voicemail message on its website, dated 19 May 2007, in which Anne Darwin is clearly heard leaving a message for her husband. The voicemail, part of an interactive graphic, ends with her saying “I’ll try and catch you tomorrow. Love you,” which the broadcaster said showed “she was doing as much of the running as he was”.”
Section 1 makes it a criminal offence to intercept a communication in the course of transmission. The listening to stored voicemails as well as accessing stored e mails all potentially fall into this category. The maximum penalty for such an offence is two years imprisonment. Again there is no public interest defence.
Once again this case bring into focus the highly dubious tactics of the media when trying to obtain information “in the public interest”. The setting up of the Leveson Inquiry and the inquiry by the House of Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport meant that at first the primary concern was about allegations of phone hacking by the News of the World. However it has now become clear that hacking phones was just one part of the unscrupulous journalist’s toolkit. It also included buying information from the police, blagging sensitive personal information from public and private sector organisations and the hacking politicians’ computers to gain access to their e mails.
There is now a very strong case for tougher regulation of the media especially when it comes to covert surveillance activities. My view is that, amongst other things, they should be subject to more of the RIPA regime as at present they only have to comply with certain aspects (Part 1 Chapter 1 – Interception of Communications). (read my blog for more).
This is a difficult time for the Murdochs and Sky News. The broadcaster’s parent company, BSkyB, is subject to a “fit and proper” investigation being conducted by the communications regulator, Ofcom, in the wake of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. Cleveland police say that enquiries are ongoing into how the emails were obtained.
No doubt there is much more to come. As Kay Burley would say, “Stay with us…”
Ibrahim Hasan is a solicitor and director of Act Now Training which provides expert training in Data Protection, Freedom of Information and Surveillance Law.
Filters are not the answer
Jamie Bartlett, Head of the Violence and Extremism Programme at Demos, responds to the ORG / LSE Media Policy Project report 'Mobile Internet censorship'.
Today the Open Rights Group released a new report on default mobile internet filters. These filters are default blocks on certain sites set by Internet Service Providers, which prevent access to them.
Although the report is specifically about mobile filters, the broader argument is about internet censorship. Much of the debate about censorship comes down how we can protect children from inappropriate content - especially pornographic material - while maintaining internet freedom.
But as this new report argues, default internet filters are not a good way to tackle the problem. They tend to be unworkable, partly because the technology changes so fast. Because of linguistic and semantic problems, any default filters also result in legitimate sites being blocked.
I have a more fundamental problem with default filters and blocks. In an age of ubiquitous, accessible material, parents need to take greater responsibility for what and how their children consume online. As we argued in Truth, Lies and the Internet, there is much more on the internet to be concerned about than sexual content.
But parents think that the digital world is alien to them – a mysterious place inhabited by their digital native children. Rubbish. Parents need to become more familiar with various aspects of internet functionaility as part of their children’s general education; and impart the importance of critical thinking, and careful use.
Relinquishing this responsibility and handing it lazily over to ISPs, dulls the senses, and ultimately denudes us of our own duties. In the long-run, that will not help anyone.
This post originally appeared on the Demos blog. Jamie Bartlett is Head of the Violence and Extremism Programme at Demos.
Mobile Broadband Group response to ORG / LSE mobile censorship report
This is the first in a series of responses to the new report 'Mobile Internet censorship: what's happening and what to do about it', published today by Open Rights Group and LSE Media Policy Project.
How to offer appropriate protection to children on the Internet is a challenge that policy makers have been wrestling with for many years. It is necessary to navigate a path that does not unnecessarily restrict personal freedoms, is technically simple for customers to implement (or remove), can be executed via numerous distribution channels, across a range of devices, and can be applied with reasonable accuracy and consistency across hundreds of millions of web sites.
The mobile operators in the UK have been working in this field since 2002, when the first 3G mobile devices started to become available. In those times only a very small proportion of children accessed the Internet through their mobile device. In anticipation of significant growth in use by children, the UK’s mobile operators, under the auspices of the Mobile Broadband Group, published a code of practice in 2004, with a view to offering a safe browsing experience for children.
The Code has a number of elements. For the purposes of today’s discussion the most relevant relates to content available on the Internet, where operators have no control over what is available. A filter to the mobile operator’s Internet access service is therefore provided so that the content thus accessible can be restricted for children. The filter is set at a level that is intended to filter out content approximately equivalent to commercial content (Commercial content – means content provided by commercial content providers (encompassing own brand and third party providers) to their mobile customers) with a classification of 18, as determined by the Independent Mobile Classification Body, a body appointed by the operators under one of the commitments in the Code.
The Mobile Broadband Group Code has a strong claim to be one of the most successful in its field. The Code was the first of its kind and was used as the template for similar codes throughout the European Union. That said, child protection remains a very challenging policy area. It is not possible to achieve total perfection in a very dynamic environment – customers do not always have strong technical knowledge, children can be adept at finding ways round the protection systems and there are now supposed to be 644,275,754 active websites to classify.
There are no official benchmarks for classification accuracy. The BSI some years ago attempted to create a Publicly Available Standard for filtering systems, which required 99.99% filtering accuracy. If a ‘Six Sigma’ manufacturing standard were to be used a 99.99966% degree of accuracy would be required (in the context of 644m websites, 2,190 misclassified websites). Even allowing for the ORG missing a few, 60 misclassified websites does not amount to anything that could reasonably be described as ‘censorship’, particularly when mobile operators are happy to remove the filters when customers show they are over 18 and will re-classify websites when misclassifications are pointed out to them. This is how the small handful of web sites that get referred to mobile operators each year are already dealt with.
We believe that the vast majority of customers recognise the need for solutions in this area for the greater good – just as people are happy to show ID in off licences if they look under 25 (I would just be happy to be asked!).
In conclusion, I would like to emphasise the areas of agreement between the ORG and the MBG. The ORG agrees that giving safer access to children is a worthwhile goal. The MBG as well as the ORG would also like to see greater availability of filtering systems for mobile devices themselves – but the market is just not there yet. The MBG has also been working on a more comprehensive filtering framework for the mobile Internet and will announce developments on that front later in 2012.
The MBG will ensure that any misclassifications reported are corrected and will consider the ORG’s report carefully. We welcome stakeholder input from all points of view (and the ORG will be aware that many hold strong opposing views to theirs) and we will continue to develop appropriate child safety policy for an ever changing environment.
Hamish MacLeod is Chair of the Mobile Broadband Group. He is writing in response to the new report 'Mobile Internet censorship: what's happening and what to do about it', published today by Open Rights Group and LSE Media Policy Project.
Kickstarting the online Renaissance
Kickstarter: medieval-meets-modern and a return to patronage
Renaissance Fair by CC-BY-2.0 Flickr: battcreekcvb
“We are the media”. This is the catch phrase of Amanda Palmer's massively successful Kickstarter campaign to fund her new album. Cutting out the middleman and sourcing the artists directly: Kickstarter is creating a new generation of art funded through the crowd-sourcing method. It offers a sense of hope that we can take up the slack and hit back at the recession with medieval-meets-modern patronage.
Kings, Popes and nobility providing money to the penniless author is an image we are all familiar with. The old patron dictated what was created, using the artist for prestige and propaganda. Snatching Michelangelo from his sculpting studio and suggesting he paint your ceiling instead wasn't an option for everyone. This system dropped out of favour when capitalism let us all participate in mass consumption of art and artists wanted more independence and new subject matters. Our return to patronage is a democratic flip-side to the autocratic control of the Renaissance
The process involved in taking a creative project from idea to completion via Kickstarter is all about direct funding by individuals. The artist first works out how much a project is going to cost. For example a goal of $10,000 is needed in order to successfully produce, promote and distribute a stop motion short. People can then 'pledge' any given amount towards this budget. There is frequently a system of rewards associated with the pledges. Creators offer hand-made packages at different levels of giving to spur us on. These rewards are specific to the project and the fans: digital downloads, painted ukuleles and comical Christmas decorations. Although credit and payment details are entered at 'point of pledge' no money is removed from your bank account. It is only if the goal is reached in an allotted period of time that the cards and account are charged. This system protects the artist from being left with half their goal and a bunch of expectant folk waiting for your half-made project.
And it is working. Since their launch in April 2009 they have reached $100 million in pledges and in October 2011 they achieved their millionth backer.
However, I do not believe that crowd funding is the future for all artists. The massive successes of Amanda Palmer and Rich Burlew were dependant on their already strong and dedicated fan-base and it will not work for everyone. We can't all be successful artists, but we can all be supportive patrons. I am therefore less excited about what this mean for the artist (much has already been written on this subject), but what this means for the individual backers and for society.
We are accustomed to giving to charity for many motivations: a desire to do good or belief in the cause, a spontaneous reaction to a specific event, a sense of guilt or a sense of pride, prestige or pity, self-worth or personal meaning. However, as a rule monetary giving is a reaction to a need.
Kickstarter giving is active.
It is not about solutions. It is not about the survival of humanity. It's just making life a little bit better. This is exciting because people are willing to take an action, not based on a need, but out of a simple appreciation of creativity. As an English literature graduate I find this particularly exciting. My degree is disparaged by mainstream media and the government with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) subjects often perceived as the only academic study worth funding.
In the face of all that, the success of Kickstarter means that art is valued by non-artists. The engineer backing $1 to a new comic book Kickstarter fund is not just saying 'I want to read this' but 'I believe that it is worth funding the Arts.'
This is big.
Let me put this in the perspective of a period of recession. People are not waving goodbye to wads of cash they were otherwise using to make origami wallets. The million plus backers have their own economic struggles, but we should be proud that in a time of difficulties, with the Arts particularly suffering (Arts Council England funding was cut by 30% in 2010), everyone has an opportunity to take up that gap -and are doing so.
The future of creativity is being decided on the internet. Is this the e-Renaissance?
Shame that for all my enthusiasm it is only the democratic process in America that we participating in! My hope is that with enough attention Kickstarter will open its doors and process to creative projects across the world.
A matter of degree
Education on the shareware model... the future of online university courses?
What matters about a university degree? Is it the credential, the interaction with peers and professors, the chance to play a little while longer before turning adult, or the stuff you actually learn? Given how much a degree costs, these are pressing questions for the college-bound and their parents.
This is particularly true in the US, where today's tuition fees at Cornell University's College of Arts and Sciences, are 14 times what they were when I started there as a freshman in 1971. This week, CNBC highlighted the costs of liberal arts colleges such as Colorado's Pepperdine, where tuition, housing, and meals add up to $54,000 a year. Hah, said friends: it's $56,000 at Haverford, where their son is a sophomore.
These are crazy numbers even if you pursue a "sensible" degree, like engineering, mathematics, or a science. In fact, it's beginning to approach the level after which a top-class private university degree no longer makes the barest economic sense. A Reuters study announced this week found that the difference between a two-year "associate" degree and a four-year BA or BSc over the course of a 30-year career is $500,000 to $600,000 (enough to pay for your child's college degree, maybe). Over a career a college degree adds about $1 million over a high school diploma, depending on the major you pick and the field you go into. An accountant could argue that there's still some room for additional tuition increases - but then, even if that accountant has teenaged kids his earnings are likely well above average.
Anthony Carnevale, the director of the center that conducted this research, tells Reuters this is a commercialization of education. Yes, of course - but if college costs as much per child as the family home inevitably commercial considerations will apply even if you don't accept Paypal founder Peter Thiel's argument about a higher education bubble.
All this provides context for this week's announcement that Harvard and MIT are funding a $60 million initiative, EDx, to provide online courses for all and sundry. Given that Britain's relatively venerable Open University was set up in 1969 to bring university-level education to a wide range of non-traditional students, remote learning is nothing new. Still, EDx is one of a number of new online education initiatives.
Experimentation with using the Internet as a delivery medium for higher education began in the mid 1990s (TXT). The Open University augmented the ability for students to interact with each other by adding online conferencing to its media mix, and many other institutions began offering online degrees. Almost the only dissenting voice at the time was that of David F. Noble, a professor at Canada's York University. In a series of essays written from 1997 to 2001, Digital Diploma Mills he criticized the commercialization of higher education and the move toward online instruction. Coursework that formerly belonged to professors and teachers, he argued, would now become a product sold by the university itself; copyright ownership would be crucial. By 2001, he was writing about the failure of many of the online ventures to return the additional revenues their institutions had hoped for.
When I wrote about these various concerns in 1999 for Scientific American (TXT) reader email accused me of being an entitled elitist and gleefully threatened me with a wave of highly motivated, previously locked-out students who would sweep the world. The main thing I hoped I highlighted, however, was the comparatively high drop-out rate of online students. This is a pattern that has continued through to mid-2000s today with little change. This seems to me a significant problem for the industry - but explains why MIT and Harvard, like some other recent newcomers, are talking about charging for exams or completion certificates rather than the courses themselves. Education on the shareware model: certainly fairer for students hoping for career advancement and great for people who just want to learn from the best brands. (Not, thankfully, the future envisaged by one of the interviewees in those articles, who feared online education would be dominated by Microsoft and Disney).
In an economic context, the US's endemic credentialism means it's the certificate that has economic value, not necessarily the learning itself. But across the wider world, it's easy to imagine local authorities taking advantage of the courses that are available and setting their own exams and certification systems. For Harvard and MIT, the courses may also provide a way of spotting far-flung talent to scoop up and educate more traditionally.
Of course, economics are not the only reason to go to college: it may make other kinds of sense. Today's college-educated parents often want their kids to go to college for more complex reasons to do with quality of life, adaptability to a changing future, and the kind of person they would like their kids to be. In my own case, the education I had gave me choices and the confidence that I could learn anything if I needed to. That sort of motivation, sadly, is being priced out of the middle class. Soon it will be open only to the very talented and poor who qualify for scholarships, and the very wealthy who can afford the luxury. No wonder the market sees an opportunity.
Wendy M. Grossman's Web site has an extensive archive of her books, articles, and music, and an archive of all the earlier columns in this series.
The Wrong Number!
Ibrahim Hasan from Act Now offers an expert legal take on the new Government communications surveillance proposals
The Coalition Agreement states that the government "will end the storage of internet and e mail records without good reason." More recently Theresa May, the Home Secretary, when announcing the Protection of Freedoms Bill, said:
"The first duty of the state is the protection of its citizens, but this should never be an excuse for the government to intrude into peoples' private lives. Snooping on the contents of families' bins and security checking school-run mums are not necessary for public safety and this Bill will bring them to an end. I am bringing common sense back to public protection and freeing people to go about their daily lives without a fear that the state is monitoring them."
These pious commitments are now in tatters as, according to recent media reports, the Government wants the power to be able to monitor the calls, emails, texts and website visits of everyone in the UK. Whilst we are still waiting for the details, some have suggested that the proposals are directed not only at monitoring the use of new instant communication tools (e.g. Twitter, Blackberry Messenger etc.) but also at loosening the current restrictions on accessing communications data.
A new law, which may be announced in the forthcoming Queen's Speech in May, will require communications service providers (CSPs) to give intelligence agency, GCHQ, access to communications on demand, in real time. However it will not allow GCHQ to access the content of emails, calls or messages without a warrant. At present CSPs are obliged to keep details of users' web access, email and phone calls for 12 months, under the EU Data Retention Directive 2009. While they also keep a limited amount of other data on their own subscribers for billing and commercial purposes, the new law will require them to store a much bigger volume of third party data such as that from Google Mail, Twitter, Skype and Facebook that crosses their servers every day.
Civil liberties groups, including Liberty and Big Brother Watch, have condemned this move as an unacceptable invasion of privacy. This is not the first time this idea has been floated. In October 2010, the Government announced its intention to introduce the Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP), at a cost of £2billion. This was a rehash Labour's abandoned proposal (which was heavily criticised by the Coalition partners at the time) to require communications service providers (CSPs) to collect and store the traffic details of all internet and mobile phone use, initially in a central database. This latest announcement seems to be the same IMP project but renamed "the Communications Capabilities Development Programme (CCDP)".
The Law
Access to Communications Data in the UK is already governed by Part 1 Chapter 2 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) (sections 21-25). This sets out who can access what type of communications data and for what purposes. This includes the police and security services as well as councils, government departments and various quangos. The legislation restricts access to the different types of communications data depending on the nature of the body requesting it and the reason for doing so.
The definition of "communications data" includes information relating to the use of a communications service (e.g. telephone, internet and postal service) but does not include the contents of the communication itself. Such data is broadly split into three categories: "traffic data" i.e. where a communication was made from, to whom and when; "service data" i.e. the use made of the service by any person e.g. itemized telephone records; "subscriber data" i.e. any other information that is held or obtained by an operator on a person they provide a service to.
Some public bodies already get access to all types of communications data e.g. police, security service, ambulance service, customs and excise. Local authorities are restricted to subscriber and service use data and even then only where it is required for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime or preventing disorder.
At present access to communications data is granted through a system of self authorisation. There are forms to complete (signed by a senior officer) and tests of necessity and proportionality to satisfy. Notices have to be served on the CSP requesting the data. From time to time, the Interception of Communications Commissioner inspects public authorities that use these powers. There is no system of judicial oversight.
Real Time
It is unclear as to how the new proposals will be different from the current system. There is talk of the security services being able to access data in real time. The current system normally gives access to historic data. It does allow real time access to certain organisations (including the police and security services) but only in an emergency to save life or limb or in exceptionally urgent operations. The internal authorisation forms still have to be completed and written notices have to be served on the CSP later on. Maybe the Government wants GCHQ to have carte blanche direct access into CSPs systems. This would be unprecedented and certainly "Orwellian" to say the least. The potential for abuse would be massive.
Updating the Law
The Home Office Minister says they are updating the law "in terms of social media and new devices". If this means GCHQ knowing when an individual visits these sites, this is already allowed under the current regime known as traffic data (web browsing information). If the proposals go further and would allow GCHQ to look at actual webpages visited within a domain (e.g. Facebook) and calls made (e.g. from Skype) this would be a big extension of existing powers and much more intrusive. It gives the possibility of building up a picture of someone's lifestyle, their movements, contacts, interests etc.; potentially a vast amount of information which, if it gets into the wrong hands, can be quite damaging to individuals.
Safeguards
At present the checks and balances are very weak as discussed above (self authorisation followed by a notice to the CSP). The proposals, which talk of access in "real time" and "on demand", require much stronger checks and balances.
If it is really necessary for GCHQ to have access to such a vast amount of information, it should be subject to judicial approval. This could be a similar system to the one, which councils will be subject to as a result of the changes to the RIPA regime to be made by the Protection of Freedoms Bill. In the future any local authority request for communications data (however minor) will have to be approved by a Magistrate. (See my earlier article in LGL for more detail about the Bill.) After all, the powers that the police and intelligence agencies have under RIPA to undertake surveillance and acquire communications data are much wider than those of local authorities.
There are also legitimate concerns about what would happen if the information held and accessed on individuals by GCHQ gets into the wrong hands. Can we really trust the law enforcement agencies not to mishandle such data? Only recently allegations have surfaced that that the police have been misusing the same powers the Government is now seeking to extend, to assist the tabloids to locate the whereabouts of celebrities and other persons of interest.
The Government needs to think carefully before proceeding. If these new proposals are enacted there is a massive potential for misuse. They will provide a rich seem of information which may be bought by journalists from unscrupulous police and intelligence officers. This could lead to further erosion of public trust in the law enforcement agencies and Government. Of course "the Devil is in the detail" and we wait to see how the Government will address these concerns.
Ibrahim Hasan is a solicitor and director of Act Now Training. Act Now provides Expert Training in Data Protection, Freedom of Information and Surveillance Law.
A really fancy hammer with a gun
The problem with robots isn't robots. The problem is us
Is a robot more like a hammer, a monkey, or the Harley-Davidson on which he rode into town? Or try this one: what if the police program your really cute, funny robot butler (Tony Danza? Scarlett Johansson?) to ask you a question whose answer will incriminate you (and which it then relays). Is that a violation of the Fourth Amendment (protection against search and seizure) or the Fifth Amendment (you cannot be required to incriminate yourself)? Is it more like flipping a drug dealer or tampering with property? Forget science fiction, philosophy, and your inner biological supremacist; this is the sort of legal question that will be defined in the coming decade.
Making a start on this was the goal of last weekend's We Robot conference at the University of Miami Law School, organized by respected cyberlaw thinker Michael Froomkin. Robots are set to be a transformative technology, he argued to open proceedings, and cyberlaw began too late. Perhaps robotlaw is still a green enough field that we can get it right from the beginning. Engineers! Lawyers! Cross the streams!
What's the difference between a robot and a disembodied artificial intelligence? William Smart (Washington University, St Louis) summed it up nicely: "My iPad can't stab me in my bed." No: and as intimate as you may become with your iPad you're unlikely to feel the same anthropomorphic betrayal you likely would if the knife is being brandished by that robot butler above, which runs your life while behaving impeccably like it's your best friend. Smart sounds unsusceptible. "They're always going to be tools," he said. "Even if they are sophisticated and autonomous, they are always going to be toasters. I'm wary of thinking in any terms other than a really, really fancy hammer."
Traditionally, we think of machines as predictable because they respond the same way to the same input, time after time. But Smart, working with Neil Richards (University of Washinton, St Louis), points out that sensors are sensitive to distinctions analog humans can't make. A half-degree difference in temperature, or a tiny change in lighting are different conditions to a robot. To us, their behaviour will just look capricious, helping to foster that anthropomorphic response, wrongly attributing to them the moral agency necessary for guilt under the law: the "Android Fallacy".
Smart and I may be outliers. The recent Big Bang Theory episode in which the can't-talk-to-women Rajesh, entranced with Siri, dates his iPhone is hilarious because in Raj's confusion we recognize our own ability to have "relationships" with almost anything by projecting human capacities such as cognition, intent, and emotions. You could call it a design flaw (if humans had a designer), and a powerful one: people send real wedding presents to TV characters, name Liquid Robotics' Wave Gliders, and characterize sending a six-legged land mine-defusing robot that's lost a leg or two to continue work as "cruel" (Kate Darling, MIT Media Lab).
What if our rampant affection for these really fancy hammers leads us to want to give them rights? Darling asked. Or, asked Sinziana Gutiu (University of Ottawa), will sex robots like Roxxxy teach us wrong expectations of humans (When the discussion briefly compared sex robots to pets, a Twitterer quipped, "If robots are pets is sex with them bestiality?")?
Few are likely to fall in love with the avatars in the automated immigration kiosks proposed at the University of Arizona (Kristen Thomasen, University of Ottawa) with two screens, one with a robointerrogator and the other flashing images and measuring responses. Automated law enforcement, already with us in nascent form, raises a different set of issues (Lisa Shay . Historically, enforcement has never been perfect; laws only have to be "good enough" to achieve their objective, whether that's slowing traffic or preventing murder. These systems pose the same problem as electronic voting: how do we audit their decisions? In military applications, disclosure may tip off the enemy, as Woodrow Hartzog (Samford University). Yet here - and especially in medicine, where liability will be a huge issue - our traditional legal structures decide whom to punish by retracing the reasoning that led to the eventual decision. But even today's systems are already too complex.
When Hartzog asks if anyone really knows how Google or a smartphone tracks us, it reminds me of a recent conversation with Ross Anderson, the Cambridge University security engineer. In 50 years, he said, we have gone from a world whose machines could all be understood by a bright ten-year-old with access to a good library to a world with far greater access to information but full of machines whose inner workings are beyond a single person's understanding. And so: what does due process look like when only seven people understand algorithms that have consequences for the fates of millions of people? Bad enough to have the equivalent of a portable airport scanner looking for guns in New York City; what about house arrest because your butler caught you admiring Timothy Olyphant's gun on Justified?
"We got privacy wrong the last 15 years." Froomkin exclaimed, putting that together. "Without a strong 'home as a fortress right' we risk a privacy future with an interrogator-avatar-kiosk from hell in every home."
The problem with robots isn't robots. The problem is us. As usual, Pogo had it right.
Wendy M. Grossman's Web site has an extensive archive of her books, articles, and music, and an archive of all the earlier columns in this series.
Data Gathering – What are the benefits?
Tashalaw reviews this year's Scrambling for Safety Conference
One Nation Under CCTV
Yesterday I attended the Scrambling for Safety conference at the LSE. I was really impressed by the wide range of speakers, from the leader of human rights group Liberty Shami Chakrabarti to the Conservative MP David Davis. Finally a real discussion featuring voices from a wide range of political and ideological affiliations, although noting the absence of any Labour politicians. It was a bit less exciting when I realised they all seemed to agree…
The members of the panel talked about the importance of privacy and the negative implications of the invasion of privacy. They also agreed, particularly Julian Huppert and David Davis MP, that politicians generally do not have a clue and often take advice from civil servants and security officials as fact. They often seem to rely on information without attempting to validate or research it themselves, probably due to the volume of information that relates to many issues. But what I really wanted to know was how much would it cost? Is it even viable or productive? Would it in any way benefit the general public in a way that would justify such an invasion of privacy? If not, why on earth was this happening? If stronger policies on surveillance are indeed necessary what are the alternatives?
Some light was shed on these questions in the second panel, who could not identify any real benefit of swamping the police with massive amounts of data and the chaos which would ensue as a result. Data gathering on such a large scale does not seem to make sense at all. If the government’s plans to combat serious crime and terrorism with these measures, this shows a clear lack of foresight. The panel emphasized that gathering data in this way would only catch very basic internet users, as there are so many ways to hide the data being picked up, such as using encrypted pages. Monitoring basic internet use, when more advanced users (you don’t need to be very advanced to use dropbox for example) know a way around it, would encourage a culture of “underground internet use”. This would only complicate things for the police/security services. It is also a waste of money and resources to invest in a policy that is fundamentally ineffective and extremely invasive of basic rights and freedoms. The costs are therefore certainly not outweighed by the benefits, which seem negligible if there even are any.
Whitfield Diffie, somewhat of a celebrity in the tech world, so I was told, addressed the issue of privacy of search terms such as e.g. divorce lawyers or cancer clinics which may be largely indicative of your private life. By accessing an individual’s search data the government would be enforcing a huge invasion of privacy, but it would also be largely counter productive and irrelevant to the police regarding surveillance matters.
A retired police officer in the audience stated that it appears the government are seeking to implement preemptive measures. Such data is often unusable and overwhelming to the police force because of the sheer volume. Analysing such data is complex and time consuming and thus provides little value in many investigations which need to be carried out swiftly. He gave the example of the recent shootings in Toulouse – France, where police had access to 500 intercepted email messages which provided a lead to the suspect. However the manpower to analyse and identify suspects in pressing operations will not always be available in relation to processing data. The police may not have enough people assigned to a particular case to be able to go through all the available data.
The conference was wrapped up by Nick Pickles from Big Brother Watch, who ended the day with a quote from David Cameron criticising Labour’s policies on surveillance. He pointed out that the coalition government must keep their word, something I fully agree with. He then added that he was standing for the Conservatives in the next election, making his short speech seem a little more like a self interested campaign. However the fact that the organisers were from a wide variety of civil society organisations allowed a broad discussion on an issue that affects everyone regardless of their political affiliation.
The main arguments made at the conference, appeared to be that the proposal is not only a gross invasion of fundamental rights and freedoms in both national and European law, but that it is also both costly and ineffective. The plan seems to be based on a misinformed and misguided policy relating to security, which doesn’t seem to provide any benefit to government, the police or national security. While this issue could have huge negative consequences it is still barely understood by either government or the public.
Shami Chakrabarti used the quote “they say the innocent have nothing to hide – but they do have something to protect”. At present there is little legislation relating to privacy law in the UK and Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) – the right to a private and family life, is often loosely applied. The Scrambling for Safety conference highlighted the fact that even current law on communications remains highly contentious. The proposed casual and constant invasion of privacy is not in the public interest, neither in terms of security nor cost. The proposal is unrealistic and inappropriate, what is really needed in the UK are stronger privacy laws/rights to protect our freedom and to fully integrate and apply Article 8 of the ECHR in national law.
Tashalaw writes on legal issues in her Weekly Law Blog. you can also follow her on twitter @tashalaws.
A nation of suspects
Bad policies are like counterfeit money: they never quite go away and they ensnare the innocent
It's about a month since the coalition government admitted its plans for the Communications Capabilities Development Programme, and while most details are still unknown, it's pretty clear that it's the Interception Modernisation Programme Redux. The goal is the same: to collect and monitor the nation's communications data. What's changed since 2009 is the scope, which takes in vast quantities of data that have never been kept before and the conditions of storage, which site the data at ISPs rather than GCHQ.
The security policy analyst Susan Landau has written in various places about the fundamental threat to security created by opening a hole (aka, a back door) for law enforcement. A hole is a hole, no matter who it's for, and once it's there it can be used by people it's not intended for. You'd think this would be blatantly obvious. It's like requiring everyone to give the police a copy of the key to their house and/or car.
The justification for all this is modernization: restoring to law enforcement abilities had before the Internet came along and made a mess of everything. (How soon they forget the world of anonymous telephone booths, cash payments, postal mail, and open-air meetings.) The obvious next stage under this logic - if all our online communications are recorded for prospective future study in case we become criminals - would be to demand the same powers over our offline lives.
Yesterday, at the ninth Scrambling for Safety event, Liberty doyenne Shami Chakrabarti raised just this point, asking if the Home Office's goal is to eliminate all unwatchable spaces, online and off. (I note an amusing side effect: such a policy could effectively nationalize the pornography industry.)
CCDP, the MP David Davis said yesterday, would turn us all into "a nation of suspects". Quite so. Though how long anyone will be free to point this out is another question. In 2002, the activist John Gilmore was tossed off a British Airways plane for wearing a small button that said "Suspected Terrorist".
There are all sorts of things wrong with building a system to implement surveillance as standard; Ross Anderson liveblogged the many that were made yesterday. Paul Bernal also has three good blog pieces on the politics of privacy, the infeasibility of securing the data, and why the government keeps getting these policies so spectacularly wrong.
The net.wars back catalogue adds that dataveillance doesn't work and the chilling effect of the amounts of data already available about all of us.
Here, I'd like to pursue an analogy to drug testing in sports. The University of Aberystwyth's Mark Burnley did a good presentation last week for London Skeptics in the Pub; you can hear it at The Pod Delusion.
When it comes to drug testing, athletes are presumed guilty. They must repeatedly prove their innocence by passing drug tests that examine their urine and blood for any of a lengthy list of substances and methods that are banned under rules set down by the World Anti-Doping Agency and that cover all Olympic sports. The result is an arms race between athletes (or more properly, Burnley argues, their coaches and doctors) and the testing authorities. When steroids became detectable they were replaced with new substances and techniques: EPO, insulin, designer steroids, HGH, latterly microdosing. It's the stupid athletes who get caught
All, doping or not, submit to substantial invasions of privacy. Under the "whereabouts" rule, they must identify an hour every day where they can be found; they are held responsible for every substance found in their bodies; missed tests add up to failed tests. You may lack sympathy on the basis that a) they choose to be professional athletes, b) they are rewarded with lots of money and glamor, and c) they're all cheaters anyway.
To counter: for many their choice of specialization was made very young; many athletes who live under these rules are largely invisible and struggling to break even; and the system is failing to catch the cheaters who matter. (That said, what *is* interesting is the exercise of keeping athletes' submitted samples and testing them again years later in the light of improved technical knowledge.) Meanwhile, the huge sums of money in the sports business make it worthwhile to fund research into new, less detectable techniques and the morality plays that surround athletes who do get caught could hardly be bettered as a method for convincing kids that doping is what you need to do to become a winner.
In any event, the big point Burnley made is that the big doping cases that have been broken have been primarily through traditional policing methods. In tennis, Wayne Odesnik did not get caught by doping tests; he got caught by Australian Customs, who found syringes and eight vials of HGH in his suitcase. Similarly, despite what understandably risk-averse politicians would like to believe under the influence of the security services, unfettered data collection will make plenty of ordinary people's lives miserable - but crime will route around it.
Wendy M. Grossman's Web site has an extensive archive of her books, articles, and music, and an archive of all the earlier columns in this series.
Here comes the charge of the anti porn brigade
No-one learns about children's attitudes to sex by blocking porn; least of all politicians
Many of my old schoolfriends can barely remember any of their I.T lessons, let alone the 'Porn Incident' of Year Nine, when a small group of boys were found sharing pornographic images on school computers. It came as something of a surprise, mainly because everyone else knew not to do at school what they shouldn't even have been doing at home.
Anyway, they were caught one dreary afternoon and temporarily suspended for their misconduct. Then they came back. Everyone (nearly) forgot about it in the end. And eventually we all grew up.
But perhaps I've learnt the wrong lesson from this tale. Maybe I should be more alarmed at the ease with which pornographic material can be transferred, or that controls aren't automagically installed on school computers in order to prevent a repeat outcome.
At least this is impression I get from the report produced by Claire Perry MP and her merry band of porn blockers. The recent Independent Parliamentary Inquiry into Online Child Protection states that “six out of ten children can theoretically access the internet with no restrictions in their home”. In the hands of professional scaremongers this turns into Six out of ten children download adult material (yes, that's right; apparently 60% of kids have nothing better to do than stream smut onto their smartphones. When they're not rioting, of course).
But, in a bid to appease such moral panic, politicians will continue to search for the ultimate solution. The inquiry report suggests a network level “Opt-In” system emulating the one “already used by most major UK mobile phone companies”. Yet, it is not foolproof; see the infamous example of O2 blocking a church's website on the grounds that it featured adult content.
Internet Service Providers are rightly weary about the implementation of an überblock. TalkTalk have been bold enough to nudge new customers who wish to purchase their HomeSafe service into making an “Active Choice” over having adult content filtered on their behalf. But that is – and ought to be – the limit of an ISP's powers. Buying an internet package is not like ordering pizza. You can't have a no-frills version with the option of requesting some porn as a top-up.
As Professor Andy Phippen pointed out during the inquiry's oral sessions last year, the überblock is not the practical common sense solution Perry would have us believe. He said: “the vast majority of filtering technology is either metadata-based or keyword based”. So it cannot differentiate between sites that contain the words like 'sex' and sites specifically created for the purpose of displaying adult content. This raises the problem of false positives; filters will inevitably block the truths that may satisfy a child's curiosity over topics that refer to sex, such as anatomical biology, breast cancer, or sexual health.
The intention to adapt a combination of Ofcom and BBFC definitions of adult content for the web also neglects the fluidity of ratings systems. The 'TV watershed' has changed over the years, just as have ratings of many adult films. Both institutions revise their opinions more often than we think. It may turn out that their judgements on particular kinds of adult content may still be unpalatable for Perry and her porn-blocking posse, in whom Mary Whitehouse's spirit very much complains about video nasties, no doubt.
On a non-technical note, pornography is only one of a seemingly infinite number of things a parent has to worry about in raising their offspring. Never mind sex; children are just as easily at risk of discovering webpages portraying racially inappropriate or excessively violent content, or being bullied online.
And yet, according to the recent Ofcom media use and attitudes report, four-fifths (81%) of parents of five to fifteen year-olds trust their child to use the internet safely. 65% feel that its benefits outweigh the risks. Perhaps Claire Perry ought to trust parents to make the final call on their own kids' internet usage.
In my own school experience, porn took up very little time in the average boy's everyday life. Those who talked about it most probably had a stash to flog. But it meant nothing over the years, for porn rapidly gave way to texting and phoning girls, secretly hoping they'd return our advances soon enough for us not to fret over whether the feelings were mutual. That, or we'd go and play football.
Admittedly, this was at the tail-end of the dial-up era; mobile WAP technology was painfully slow and certainly not worth the cost. But I detest the notion that today's youth are sexually depraved porn-obsessed zombies, wandering about glued to their gadgets, getting xxx-rated content on the move without a care for anything else. What a way to insult their intelligence.
Porn or no porn, as social beings, children will inevitably be exposed to sex in ways that will fascinate and frighten them. There's no getting around that. If – like Andrea Leadsom MP – you still entertain the idea that “some sort of internet ISP network level security is the only answer that might potentially solve this once and for all”, then you will not have even begun to truly comprehend the innumerable factors underlying children's attitudes to sex.
The general – if slightly glib – opinion of the 'Porn Incident' at my school was that if the culprits were stupid enough to get caught, then they deserved the punishment they got. But then other more important things took over our lives and we all got over it.
Those with serious reality-fantasy anxieties directly affected by pornography ought to be examined and helped privately; there is no need to legislate for everyone else. But if there have to be any rules on internet usage at all, politicians should let parents set them. As one blogger so eloquently put it, child protection begins at home.
Habib Kadiri usually operates under the moniker of heakthephreak, mainly @heakthephreak.blogspot.co.uk.
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