It was standing room only in Parliament’s Committee Room 11 yesterday
afternoon. People had packed the place to learn more about PRISM and what ought
to happen next. Most of these people were Open Rights Group members, though. I
saw 2 MPs and a couple of Parliamentary
researchers together with some well respected journalists who were also covering the event.
What did we learn?
First, that Parliamentarians knew nothing about PRISM (and
the Tempora project) other than what they had read in the papers. Second, that
they felt they were unlikely to learn anything of significance from the Foreign Office or
from ministers. This sort of operational
stuff is not for them. Such matters are
usually considered by the Intelligence and Security Committee, members of which
are appointed by the Prime Minister, and the Committee reports directly to the
Prime Minister.
It is the sort of stuff, however, that the independent
privacy researcher Caspar Bowden knows a lot about, and he gave the audience a short
lecture on what it is, why cloud computing providers ought to be concerned, and
why businesses might increasingly look away from the UK and to other countries,
particularly Germany, as a safe harbour for their commercial data assets in
future. How do you fight cybercrime and protect privacy in the cloud? Ask Caspar,
who will point you in the direction of a number of reports he has helped
compile.
As David Davies MP started to speak, it became pretty clear
to me that, despite his well known views on the issue, no-one from the Home
Office has given him a private briefing about the cunning plans that are being
hatched behind the scenes to improve the current scrutiny procedures. Quite why
no-one from the Home Office has managed to correct his misconceptions about the
current scrutiny procedures is a mystery. I can only conclude that there is a deliberate
campaign to keep him in the dark.
Anyway, David warmed up by criticising the current RIPA safeguards,
exclaiming that it’s been apparent that there are pretty poor protective
measures in place. He commented that “the man at the desk next door” will readily
approve applications for communications data, while a judicial figure would more
closely scrutinise each request. He ended with with a flourish: “Parliament
ought to rip up RIPA and start again.”
If anyone from the Home Office had managed to brief him in the
past six months or so, he would have realised that what is being proposed in the
revised (and so far unpublished) version
of the Communications Data Bill is, effectively, a complete re-write of the relevant
parts of RIPA. There are plans for a radical
ramp up of the regulation of the law enforcement authorities that seek
communications data. I won’t say any more, otherwise I’ll feel a need to take
refuge in a country that welcomes people like Edward Snowden and Julian
Assagne.
I can end on an upbeat note. I left Parliament yesterday
with a couple of bottles of House of Commons triple distilled Speaker Bercow’s
vodka. Produced in the heart of Cheshire, and bottled by G & J Greenhall, it’s
a smooth spirit with no heavy oil aftertaste. Marvellous! It's just the stuff that Parliament should be selling. Order some from your local MP
today.
Image credit:
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/audio/video/2013/6/6/1370557489060/Prism-008.jpg
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