Cyber101x Cyberwar, Surveillance and Security - Week 4 - The Democratic Question in the Collection of Metadata

INTRODUCING BEN WIZNER

  REBECCA LAFORGIA: What follows are two excerpts from the interview with Mr Ben Wizner, who we're introduced to in week two. The interviews complement the modules we have just completed, but they also introduce us to things we are yet to cover. In the interviews he speaks to several observations, one of them being around democracy. That even if mass surveillance and security is often in technical terms, it is at its core about democracy and democratic participation. In the second observation, Mr Wizner speaks of the ongoing nature of this question around mass surveillance and the importance of developing over time the capacity to enter into democratic dialogue around mass surveillance. So watch them both. They complement what we've covered, but they also introduce us to concepts we're going to cover.
BEN WIZNER ON DEMOCRACY

  BEN WIZNER: So, I think if we were to summarise what we've all learned in the last two years from Edward Snowden's revelations and the media's excellent reporting, it is that surveillance technologies have outpaced democratic controls. And that governments have placed mass surveillance ahead of cyber security. And I think that this is something that perhaps the broader public has not sufficiently understood. Which is that there's actually a tension between the government's surveillance efforts, which include creating and exploiting vulnerabilities in communication systems, and the government's cyber security mission which is aimed at protecting us from malicious attacks from hackers, from foreign governments, from criminals. That in effect, governments-- particularly the US government and the British government, but not only those two governments-- have made the strategic decision to weaken communication systems for everyone in order to facilitate mass surveillance. Not targeted surveillance of individuals who are suspected of wrongdoing, but mass passive collection of as many communications as they can intercept. So, that has been the primary message to the technology community. And of course, the response of the technology community has been impressively to bolster defences, to increase encryption, to raise the cost of mass surveillance. I think the message to the broader public-- not the technology community-- is as much one about democratic participation as it is about surveillance. This is what our governments did without consulting us. Now, we have subsequent concerns about these surveillance practices, but we also have procedural concerns about how something like this can happen in free societies without the public being consulted. And so, I think those are really two messages for the people of the world. First of all, how could something like this be done without our consent? Second of all, now that we have been brought in to the conversation with our governments, are we going to accept this?

BEN WIZNER ON MASS SURVEILLANCE

  BEN WIZNER: I hope that citizens don't feel powerless in the face of this debate. Citizens have always known how to affect change, they just haven't always had the energy and motivation to make it so. We know how to mobilise. We know how to engage in public debates. If we sit this out, if we decide that these issues are too complicated then we know who's going to be shaping our future. It's going to be corporations who want to collect all of our information because that's their business model. It's going to be security agencies who want to collect all of that information because that's their natural tendency. It's in their nature. And if we leave the decisions to those powerful entities, over time that's going to be corrosive to our free societies. And so it's very, very important for common people to participate in this debate, to become more digitally literate, to understand how technology is shaping our lives, and to tell our elected officials that these issues are very, very important to us.

 THE DEMOCRATIC QUESTION IN THE COLLECTION OF METADATA

 REBECCA LAFORGIA: Surveillance is and always will be a political question. Who gets to look over your information? What do they get to do with it? Why are they looking at it? Surveillance is inherently about power. Now when that someone doing the surveillance is a state, it becomes at its very core, a question about the individual's relationship with the state. And that, by definition, is a political question. When we think about this issue, perhaps old metaphors come to mind, for example, the classic imagery of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four in which we imagine a big brother cruel in different arbitrary powerful and through surveillance controlling the moment of every individual's life turning them into fearful, small, disconnected, lonely beings. This historical image of the relationship, the risks of surveillance doesn't quite work in modern day society. And there's two reasons why. First of all, in some ways we desire and need the big brother to look over us. There are legitimate reasons for surveillance. There are security threats which require surveillance. This is accepted. So the image of big brother becomes slightly reworked. It's got a level of consent. In some ways, we do need an element of surveillance. Secondly, unlike the very fearful individuals that were leading small lives because they knew they were being watched, our lives are often large and performative. We are performing like never before on the internet, and in need and in some ways and in some situations, we ourselves are using the internet to document and promote surveillance of the state itself to record human rights concerns and political concerns. So the difficulty therefore is working out how in the 21st century in the context of cybersecurity, metadata, extraterritoriality, which is surveillance beyond borders, how do we frame the politics of this question? What are our metaphors? What are we looking for if the old analogies don't quite fit? This section of the course will look to reports from the United Nations on surveillance and international human rights. The purpose of looking at these reports is to enable us to think about metadata and surveillance to give language and concepts from international law that can assist in understanding how surveillance, in particular of metadata, affects our relationship with the state. The political element is what gives urgency to the inquiry. I want to consider very briefly two quotes illustrating the politics in surveillance. Firstly, Ben Emmerson QC, who is the current special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism reported to the General Assembly on counterterrorism and mass digital surveillance and metadata. In that report he stated that and I'm quoting, "The international community needs to squarely confront this revolution in our collective understanding of the relationship between the individual and the state." The General Assembly resolution 68/167 on the right to privacy in digital age also speaks about the politics affirming that previously leads to protecting rights which are, quote "One of the foundations of a democratic society." This course will be exploring the language, ideas, and concepts in international law for squarely confronting this challenge in the collective relationship between individual and the state.