Brits Must Trade Digital Freedoms For Safety, Says Crime Agency Boss

bestweasel writes: The Guardian has an interview with Keith Bristow, the head of the National Crime Agency, (sometimes called Britain's FBI, apparently) in which he says, "Britons must accept a greater loss of digital freedoms in return for greater safety from serious criminals and terrorists." He also mentions pedophiles, of course. The article seems to cover just the highlights of the interview, but in another quote he says that for "policing by consent," the consent is "expressed through legislation." While this might sound reassuring, it's coupled with the Home Secretary's call last week for greater mass surveillance powers. Presumably whoever wins power in the elections next year will claim that this gives them the required consent (that's democracy, folks!) and pass the laws.

Comments

Trading Freedom for Security?

[brainboyz]

Because that always works out well for those giving up freedoms. Always.

Re:Trading Freedom for Security?

[Anonymous Coward]

we never really talk about that so it doesn't count.

The thing we should be talking about is how and why politicians worldwide are running a fear campaign, with the central message that loss of freedom is a necessary path to security.

Just a few weeks ago, Australia's Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, said:

"Regrettably, for some time to come, Australians will have to endure more security than we're used to, and more inconvenience than we would like. Regrettably for some time to come, the delicate balance between freedom and security may have to shift.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...

There's no doubt they're coordinating their attacks on our freedom, but who is driving the campaign and what is their end goal?

Re:Trading Freedom for Security?

[rvw]

we never really talk about that so it doesn't count.

The thing we should be talking about is how and why politicians worldwide are running a fear campaign, with the central message that loss of freedom is a necessary path to security.

Only one reason: because the people want it. Fear is an easy emotion.

Re:Trading Freedom for Security?

[strikethree]

There's no doubt they're coordinating their attacks on our freedom, but who is driving the campaign and what is their end goal?

I do not know who, but we read about it in Brave New World and 1984. They want power. Absolute, soul crushing, power. The infamous "they" are closer than ever before to getting it... but what then? Absolute power is not enough to satisfy. After a decade or two, what then? There will be incredible death and destruction.

And the cycle will begin again... probably with sticks and stones this time.

Re:Trading Freedom for Security?

[Somebody Is Using My]

It's a false comparison anyway.

In these bargains we do not trade "freedom for security" against some threat; instead we trade away our freedoms for a different kind of threat. History has shown that governments can be as dangerous to their populace as the criminals against whom theysupposedly protect. By giving up our freedoms, we are merely trading the types of risk we face: criminals, terrorists, et al. are an extremely rare but potentially quite deadly threat, whereas governments are an all-pervasive threat (to life and property) but the effects are usually much more limited in scope (usually restrictions on how you act or spend your money at first, although governments also have the potential to be far more dangerous).

Governments claim we must give up freedom for security, but we get no security out of the trade; we merely exchange an immediate (if unlikely) danger for a certain one down the road. Unfortunately, evolution has left our species with a poor ability to assess danger beyond the immediate future, a fact of which governments take advantage when they trot out their "facts" and "statistics" about how horrible is terrorism. Scared by the loud noise, we dart for any apparent shelter, often mistaking an alligator's jaws for a sheltering cave.

Let's not all be scared apes; let us look before we leap. The threat from which we need "protecting" is largely bluster and the security we are being promised is an illusion. Neither are worth sacrificing our freedoms.

Re:Trading Freedom for Security?

[Somebody Is Using My]

The end goal is simple; they want to make things easier and safer for themselves.

Government is made up of people, and those people have the same wants and desires as ourselves. In particular, they want their jobs to be less difficult and they want security of employment. These laws help enable these desires. Catching criminals is tough work, but it is easier if you have the ability to watch everyone all the time. Certainly it would be better for them to have these powers written into law so they are all above-board; that way there is no risk to their jobs when they are caught spying.

But like any other person, they are too focused on the immediate goal, unaware of how the accumulating powers of government might be misused in the future (or downplaying the risk because the immediate advantages are so obvious). It is only when the power is misused that they may regret the decision. Unfortunately, history has shown that accumulated power will inevitably be used, which is why these mistakes are all the more tragic.

It's not a conspiracy of the powerful working against us; it's an accumulation of human short-sightedness that puts the wrong tools into the hands of the corrupt.

Re:Trading Freedom for Security?

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing we should be talking about is how and why politicians worldwide are running a fear campaign, with the central message that loss of freedom is a necessary path to security.

Only one reason: because the people want it. Fear is an easy emotion.

People want to be scared? I don't think so. But if you scare them with something suitably intangible and offer a nicely expensive (as in, costing freedoms), they'll flock to you for protection. For surely, sacrifices have to be made!

There are plenty of suitably intanglible threats that can be used to play on the emotions. Terrorism is a good one. Scary brown people that proved they could reach out and touch you, yet are otherwise mostly overseas. Child molesters is another good group of bogeymen; it directly appeals on our instincts to protect children and has a built-in notion that such people are beyond the pale already and therefore acceptable targets whatever you throw at them.

"The internet" is also very intanglible to many people, so it's a good sauce to add danger to the danger, and so emphasise the need to act and do whatever it is the politician is proposing. Note the complaints about "cyberbullying" that keep on popping up. It's hardly that much worse than bullying ever was, but it's much more visible (messages you can show to others instead of just hissed threats and meaningful gestures in passing) and it involves that nebulously dangerous thing, them intarwebbertubes!

But it works well as a danger-amplifier even if the supposed thread isn't all that big on using the internet really. Terrorists on teh intarwebz? Like there's ADSL or cable in the desert. And satellite comms are well and thorougly infiltrated by the US government. They're far more likely to send a trusted family member with an envelope or some USB sticks than post stuff in the open.

It works well for adding scare value to child molesting too; most actual abuse doesn't happen on the internet and where it does, that part is easy to fix: Underage children shouldn't get unsupervised access to the digital world. But because parents evidently cannot keep the family computer in the living room in Britain, they now have a nation-wide censored-by-default porn filter "to protect the children" by treating everyone as a child by default. This quite separately from the earlier IWF-run child porn and wikipedia pages filter. It's no surprise politicians keep on proposing measures to snoop more and restrict more "on the internet", for they don't understand it and so it must be controlled by law and force.

So really, this guy is only saying that yes, there'll be more restrictions, because the politicians want to restrict you, for your own protection. Because of their ignorance really, but it's for your protection, honest. Politicians' honour!

Re:Trading Freedom for Security?

[kilfarsnar]

who is driving the campaign and what is their end goal?

It must be the Illuminati, right? Do shut up.

If you have compelling evidence of a global conspiracy, then show us. If not, then cut it out; there are simpler explanations than global conspiracies.

Meh, even with compelling evidence most people won't believe a conspiracy is afoot. I've discovered that, outside of mathematics, it is quite difficult to prove something. There is always another possible explanation people can use, if they don't want to go in the conspiracist's direction. Or they'll say that someone would talk and expose the plot, or that such a level of organization isn't possible, or some such comforting rationale.

As we well know, people are good at continuing to believe what they have always believed. On any side of an issue people can discount evidence or say, "Maybe that's true but it doesn't necessarily follow that what you're saying is correct." What if the AC above provided links to documents from a Bilderberg meeting where they talked about using fear to control the population? (Incidentally, the existence of the Bilderberg group was once thought to be a conspiracy theory, but is now understood to be a real thing). The documents' authenticity would immediately be suspect. Can you prove the document is genuine? Good luck with that. So the document can safely be ignored because it cannot be proven as genuine. What if someone came forward and said they has spoken to a member of the conspiracy and had it confirmed? Hearsay. What if someone said they themselves were a member of a conspiracy? Well, everyone they implicate is going to deny it and the person will be ostracized.

If there were a global conspiracy to curtail freedoms, there is likely little direct evidence of it. Likely nothing is written down, and no one is going to talk about it. It probably can't be proven. So those of us who think that powerful people coordinate in secret to advance their interests will continue to believe that. And those of us who think events have a more mundane and ordinary cause will continue to think that. And people who think there is some sort of objective reality will continue to think that as well.

He may as well have said

[Saint Gerbil]

"They have already won, run for your lives! In other news I shouldn't be in this job!." - Keith Bristow

Re:Brits don't have this guy on their money

[norriefc]

Didn't help stop The Patriot Act

Leader quotation bingo

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

It's almost like playing quotation bingo with these issues now.

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." -- Pitt the Younger

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin

"The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." -- George Santayana

Re:Leader quotation bingo

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Of course. But when people who have literally led governments or armed forces can still maintain that position, any appeal to blind trust by an authoritarian government must surely demand a healthy degree of scepticism.

Re:Leader quotation bingo

[itzly]

If enough people use encrypted communication, it will only be a matter of time before the use of encryption is made a crime.

Re:Leader quotation bingo

[nabsltd]

On the other hand, people who've been actually in charge of government and military units know better than most why "blind trust" is the only kind they can appeal to. They know the real reasons for these measures, and why the public must not.

Do you seriously believe this?

Do you know why the only statistics the TSA provides is on "items seized" and not "failures to seize really dangerous items in tests"? It's because they routinely miss far too high a percentage of dangerous items in tests, and have never actually caught somebody at screening that was intending serious harm.

The "secret dangers" the government is protecting us from basically don't exist. Sure, there are dangers, but invasive screenings at airports, collecting every phone call and e-mail, and tossing people into prison without trials haven't stopped one single plot. The Boston Marathon bombings could likely have been stopped far in advance if data that had been collected not through the drag net that is the NSA would merely have been analyzed in time. Instead, because so much data is being collected, everything important is being overlooked.

Then, there's the whole class of dangers that can't be protected against (the whole "going postal" bit) without imposing dictatorial restrictions on movement, yet governments are actually trying to stop them. Then we have incidents like in Ferguson, MO, where agents of the government might have committed a crime, and when the people complained, they were met with force and had all legal means of redress blocked at every turn. That desire for control by governments is why we need to start reining it in now, before it's too late.

That's How Law Works

[mentil]

All laws involve giving up freedom to do a certain thing, usually in exchange for security or safety for the society. Other laws, particularly regulations, ensure justice via making society more fair; for example the USA's Civil Rights Act prohibits a variety of forms of discrimination. The problem is that our overlords use propaganda to convince the plebes that a broad selectively-enforced law is necessary when a narrow strictly-enforced law would lead to more security for the society. Being secure in your belief that you won't be imprisoned falsely, or under a law that wasn't intended or reasonable to apply to your situation, is also an important aspect of society's security.

Re:That's How Law Works

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

All laws involve giving up freedom to do a certain thing, usually in exchange for security or safety for the society.

That is a reasonable ethical argument in favour of having laws, but unfortunately it is sometimes quite far from how the world really works. Laws are made by a small group of people, subject to a wide range of influences, most of which are not promoting the best interests of the population. Ideally, the democratic machinery of a government ensures that the population's interests still outweigh the other factors, but I think we all know this doesn't always happen.

The primary benefit of a formal constitution is to establish that certain principles are so important that they must be beyond the reach of whatever small group of lawmakers happens to hold power at any given time. To some extent, our Human Rights Act here has served a similar purpose in recent years, but of course the Tories want to get rid of that as well. In the absence of effective safeguards like this, as we have seen all too often in recent years, the politics of fear can dominate the agenda.

Re:Brits don't have this guy on their money

[91degrees]

This tired old quote is always posted without any thought or analysis. It's dumb. We trade liberty for security all the time. The police are allowed to arrest people based on probable cause.

The US Bill Of Rights itself has provision for violation of liberty - the Third Amendment allows the governmnet to violate peoples homes in times of war, the Fourth Amendment has explicit exceptions to allow the government to search your home and sieze your property. The Fifth allows the law to deprive you of life, liberty, or property. These are reaonable restrictions on liberty but they are nonetheless restrictions.

Speaking as a Brit...

[stealth_finger]

...Fuck that.

Welcome to Airstrip One

[Required Snark]

Welcome to Airstrip One, a province of Oceania.

War is peace

Freedom is slavery

Ignorance is strength

Full. Of. Shit.

[seoras]

The best thing to come out of the recent referendum on Scottish Independance has been to re-awaken the British public to politics and government.
It's not enough, there needs to be a more jarring and long lasting wake up call to what politicians are doing for corporates and the establishment under the guise of "public interests".
Mass surveillance isn't protecting us, didn't protect us in the past and certainly won't in the future.
Imagine McCarthyism with full access to your historical digital life to twist into whatever form needed to hound you out of your home, job, school, neighbourhood or even country?
Wake up!

Re:encryption

[itzly]

I'm not proposing anything, just saying that encryption is not a permanent solution.

Re:No

[K. S. Kyosuke]

You don't have to use Facebook, Google, the internet, computers, or any form of technology if you don't want to. By choosing to use them, you must obey normal laws, including laws against copying and distributing (even for free) copyrighted material.

Of course. And speaking is a privilege, because some people are mute. And you don't really have to speak unless you want to. So it doesn't really matter if you can get thrown in jail for saying a lot of things in many countries because you can just keep you mouth shut and enjoy your freedom. :-p

1984

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember over 10 years ago here on Slashdot, people joked about the various machinations of Governments around the world moving us towards a Orwellian future. People then considered the jokes amusing for a bit but ultimately a bit lame, mostly due to overuse as there was far too many examples to use them in. Now it's no longer lame, it's more a clear fact. And there's nothing that'll reverse the trend it would seem.

I'm a father of a 4 month old. I try to remain positive about the future, hope for humankind. But with this shit it gets real hard sometimes. Doesn't help that fuckheads like ISIS/ISIL are going from strength to strength - it'd be nice to actually see the good guys win for once.

We need heroes of character - living people who we can aspire to be like. But it seems that doing evil things is proving to be more successful.