7 ms·

MPs win surveillance powers legal challenge

124 points by callum85 11y ago

an_ko 11y ago
The term "emergency legislation" always makes me nervous. Laws are the nation's source code; precise wide-scoped constraints that need careful design. I'm happy this legal equivalent of technical debt is being combated, but how did this happen in the first place? Who decides a piece of legislation must be "fast-tracked"?
- switch007 11y ago
  It was a result of the European Court of Justice in April 2014 ruling against previous legislation. The usual reasons were given: ISIS, pedophilia, Syria, general terrorism.
  - higherpurpose 11y ago
    To which they always make sure to also add words like "other serious crimes" in such legislation, or even shamelessly add "drug crimes" in there, too.
  - nailer 11y ago
    Those same reasons would support live cameras in everyone's bedroom.
    - JupiterMoon 11y ago
      Note sarcasm follows... If you've nothing to fear you've nothing to hide. Why would you not want the government to be able to check what you do in the bedroom? Are you doing illegal things in there?
    - arethuza 11y ago
      Don't most people already have cameras and microphones in their bedrooms that we hope aren't "live"?
- mseebach 11y ago
  > Laws are the nation's source code Not really. Laws are the nation's monitoring server's source code. Further more, the monitoring server is running on a notoriously buggy, laggy and leaky interpreter, and most of the systems interfacing with the monitoring server uses arcane, often proprietary, and always poorly documented protocols. Amazingly, most of the time it pretty much just works, although the interesting (and severe!) bugs are all surfaced through user reports, never from a monitoring alert. But yeah, not the sort of thing you'd want to emergency patch a lot. Unfortunately, no staging environment exists.
  - Silhouette 11y ago
    Unfortunately, no staging environment exists. I think a lot of civil liberties advocates would argue that mass surveillance has been implemented before, and we do know what kind of society can develop as a result, and that is one of the reasons why those people campaign for civil liberties today.
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    To follow the analogy. This is why changes usually undergo serious code review prior to being pushed to production. This bill underwent none of that - in fact it reimplemented with bug compatibility a broken module that had been removed from production previously.
peteretep 11y ago
Can't help but feel we are incredibly lucky to have a free press in the UK. A free (and very aggressive) press means that snooped-upon data about MPs themselves will become valuable enough, and considered public interest enough, that it'll get purchased and published, which in turn motivates MPs to vote against its collection in the first place.
- nailer 11y ago
  I agree that many politicians wouldn't care about privacy unless they themselves were threatened, but I also think David Davis and Tom Watson genuinely care about everyone's right to privacy as an ethical matter. They're https://twitter.com/daviddavismp https://twitter.com/daviddavismp and https://twitter.com/tom_watson https://twitter.com/tom_watson on Twitter and well worth following.
  - switch007 11y ago
    He's an overview what he cares about: http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/10162/david_davis/haltemprice_and_howden/votes http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/10162/david_davis/haltempri... Typical Tory with a few strong opinions in some areas.
  - aembleton 11y ago
    Looks like David Davis only made his first tweet 2 hours ago but is already a verified account. I've been impressed how both of these MPs have defied their own parties to make a stand.
  - davidgerard 11y ago
    The interesting bit is that Davis is a dyed-in-the-wool Tory, mostly fiercely loyal, but is going against his party here.
- switch007 11y ago
  I would much prefer that the press focussed on bills being proposed and those in the initial stages of the process, rather than pretend to be apoplectic when terrible legislation gets royal assent (i.e. too late). We absolutely need to be more worried and indignant over legislation in the very initial stages, regardless of the risk of 'crying wolf'.
ionised 11y ago
Well this was unexpected.
swombat 11y ago
Good news, but it still can be appealed, isn't applied immediately, etc. In the meantime, the spy agencies have complete unfettered access to everything, as I understand it.
- a3n 11y ago
  Didn't they have complete, unfettered access before this legislation? Wasn't it just a law that made legal what they were doing anyway, and will do regardless?
- gorgak 11y ago
  they demonstrably do what they want, when they want, regardless of the law. personally think this ruling is irrelevant and nothing will change.
icanhackit 11y ago
The legislation was rushed through to protect what had long been in place now that it was exposed. Politicians, constantly worried about risk exposure, love surveillance. It's cheap and probably effective, as much as we like to argue that it isn't. If someone hurts a bunch of people then a whole lot of bullshit has to take place: inquiries, increases in resources to bullshit cause X, better police funding etc. They're down with having their kid's selfies, wife's neurotic texts, dick pics, GPS data etc sucked into a great spy apparatus because they care about their careers more than the great digital kaiju that privacy advocates have worried about since George Orwell summed up what was to come in his book 1984. The real conspiracy: we're governed by emotionally unsophisticated, intellectually misshapen prunes who value money and prestige over progress, and surveillance is a tool that helps them get what they value with minimal effort.
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  I think that one should add a lack of understanding (or caring) about these principles.
  - Trickanix 11y ago
    I think they probably do understand these principles or at least the very basis of them as I do with animal rights but I put it aside as it gets in the way of my meat agenda.
    - bmelton 11y ago
      I think the bigger challenge is the rhetoric that "there are no absolute rights" and its pervasive use in furthering the erosion of civil liberties. While I'm inclined to agree with the rhetoric, it's important to understand that "not absolute" !== "not protected", and are constantly using tropes like fire in a theater as an excuse for banning insensitive speech and such. A lot of it is willful, but if we keep believing the idea that our rights are fungible, then our rights will indeed become fungible. Every generation's erosion of civil liberties compounds to the new normal, which makes the next generation's erosion of civil liberties more possible, and in too many cases, even welcomed.
higherpurpose 11y ago
This comes at the right time, as the Tories are also trying to pass much worse surveillance legislation where they want to bypass the judges and only have the Home Secretary sign the "warrants" for mass surveillance (so even worse than the rubber-stamping secret FISA Court in the US). This ruling specifically says that it's illegal because the investigations aren't vetted by judges or independent third party bodies, among other reasons.
jackgavigan 11y ago
This is terrific news! Coming so soon after the Anderson Report[1], this will add to the case for a comprehensive review and redrafting of surveillance legislation, and an open debate about how we preserve privacy while providing the intelligence services and police with the tools they need to investigate and prevent terrorism and organised crime. 1: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-06/11/surveillance-anderson-report http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-06/11/surveillance-...
diocles 11y ago
The ruling itself is available - it's quite a long read: https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/judgments/david-davis-and-others-v-secretary-of-state-for-the-home-department/ https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/judgments/david-davis-and-other...
- gbuk2013 11y ago
  Thanks for the link - it was long but very readable. Here is the summary of why the courts decided against the government: ---- a) [s1 of DRIPA] does not lay down clear and precise rules providing for access to and use of communications data retained pursuant to a retention notice to be strictly restricted to the purpose of preventing and detecting precisely defined serious offences or of conducting criminal prosecutions relating to such offences; and b) access to the data is not made dependent on a prior review by a court or an independent administrative body whose decision limits access to and use of the data to what is strictly necessary for the purpose of attaining the objective pursued. ---- My personal interpretation of the reasoning in the ruling is that while a more broad data _retention_ framework is OK for practicality reasons (i.e. it is not practical to know in advance that a person is suspected of a serious crime, nor is it practical to restrict retention to only such persons as it may be necessary to look at data of other people as part of an investigation targeted at a person suspected of committing the serious crime), it must be accompanied by protections at the _access_ level (i.e. such access must be tightly restricted and judged to be necessary by a qualified independent body based on the facts of the specific case).

124 points by callum85 11y ago

an_ko 11y ago

The term "emergency legislation" always makes me nervous. Laws are the nation's source code; precise wide-scoped constraints that need careful design. I'm happy this legal equivalent of technical debt is being combated, but how did this happen in the first place? Who decides a piece of legislation must be "fast-tracked"?

switch007 11y ago
It was a result of the European Court of Justice in April 2014 ruling against previous legislation. The usual reasons were given: ISIS, pedophilia, Syria, general terrorism.
- higherpurpose 11y ago
  To which they always make sure to also add words like "other serious crimes" in such legislation, or even shamelessly add "drug crimes" in there, too.
- nailer 11y ago
  Those same reasons would support live cameras in everyone's bedroom.
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    Note sarcasm follows... If you've nothing to fear you've nothing to hide. Why would you not want the government to be able to check what you do in the bedroom? Are you doing illegal things in there?
  - arethuza 11y ago
    Don't most people already have cameras and microphones in their bedrooms that we hope aren't "live"?
mseebach 11y ago
> Laws are the nation's source code Not really. Laws are the nation's monitoring server's source code. Further more, the monitoring server is running on a notoriously buggy, laggy and leaky interpreter, and most of the systems interfacing with the monitoring server uses arcane, often proprietary, and always poorly documented protocols. Amazingly, most of the time it pretty much just works, although the interesting (and severe!) bugs are all surfaced through user reports, never from a monitoring alert. But yeah, not the sort of thing you'd want to emergency patch a lot. Unfortunately, no staging environment exists.
- Silhouette 11y ago
  Unfortunately, no staging environment exists. I think a lot of civil liberties advocates would argue that mass surveillance has been implemented before, and we do know what kind of society can develop as a result, and that is one of the reasons why those people campaign for civil liberties today.
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  To follow the analogy. This is why changes usually undergo serious code review prior to being pushed to production. This bill underwent none of that - in fact it reimplemented with bug compatibility a broken module that had been removed from production previously.

peteretep 11y ago

Can't help but feel we are incredibly lucky to have a free press in the UK. A free (and very aggressive) press means that snooped-upon data about MPs themselves will become valuable enough, and considered public interest enough, that it'll get purchased and published, which in turn motivates MPs to vote against its collection in the first place.

nailer 11y ago
I agree that many politicians wouldn't care about privacy unless they themselves were threatened, but I also think David Davis and Tom Watson genuinely care about everyone's right to privacy as an ethical matter. They're https://twitter.com/daviddavismp https://twitter.com/daviddavismp and https://twitter.com/tom_watson https://twitter.com/tom_watson on Twitter and well worth following.
- switch007 11y ago
  He's an overview what he cares about: http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/10162/david_davis/haltemprice_and_howden/votes http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/10162/david_davis/haltempri... Typical Tory with a few strong opinions in some areas.
- aembleton 11y ago
  Looks like David Davis only made his first tweet 2 hours ago but is already a verified account. I've been impressed how both of these MPs have defied their own parties to make a stand.
- davidgerard 11y ago
  The interesting bit is that Davis is a dyed-in-the-wool Tory, mostly fiercely loyal, but is going against his party here.
switch007 11y ago
I would much prefer that the press focussed on bills being proposed and those in the initial stages of the process, rather than pretend to be apoplectic when terrible legislation gets royal assent (i.e. too late). We absolutely need to be more worried and indignant over legislation in the very initial stages, regardless of the risk of 'crying wolf'.

ionised 11y ago

Well this was unexpected.

swombat 11y ago

Good news, but it still can be appealed, isn't applied immediately, etc. In the meantime, the spy agencies have complete unfettered access to everything, as I understand it.

a3n 11y ago
Didn't they have complete, unfettered access before this legislation? Wasn't it just a law that made legal what they were doing anyway, and will do regardless?
gorgak 11y ago
they demonstrably do what they want, when they want, regardless of the law. personally think this ruling is irrelevant and nothing will change.

icanhackit 11y ago

The legislation was rushed through to protect what had long been in place now that it was exposed. Politicians, constantly worried about risk exposure, love surveillance. It's cheap and probably effective, as much as we like to argue that it isn't. If someone hurts a bunch of people then a whole lot of bullshit has to take place: inquiries, increases in resources to bullshit cause X, better police funding etc. They're down with having their kid's selfies, wife's neurotic texts, dick pics, GPS data etc sucked into a great spy apparatus because they care about their careers more than the great digital kaiju that privacy advocates have worried about since George Orwell summed up what was to come in his book 1984. The real conspiracy: we're governed by emotionally unsophisticated, intellectually misshapen prunes who value money and prestige over progress, and surveillance is a tool that helps them get what they value with minimal effort.

JupiterMoon 11y ago
I think that one should add a lack of understanding (or caring) about these principles.
- Trickanix 11y ago
  I think they probably do understand these principles or at least the very basis of them as I do with animal rights but I put it aside as it gets in the way of my meat agenda.
  - bmelton 11y ago
    I think the bigger challenge is the rhetoric that "there are no absolute rights" and its pervasive use in furthering the erosion of civil liberties. While I'm inclined to agree with the rhetoric, it's important to understand that "not absolute" !== "not protected", and are constantly using tropes like fire in a theater as an excuse for banning insensitive speech and such. A lot of it is willful, but if we keep believing the idea that our rights are fungible, then our rights will indeed become fungible. Every generation's erosion of civil liberties compounds to the new normal, which makes the next generation's erosion of civil liberties more possible, and in too many cases, even welcomed.

higherpurpose 11y ago

This comes at the right time, as the Tories are also trying to pass much worse surveillance legislation where they want to bypass the judges and only have the Home Secretary sign the "warrants" for mass surveillance (so even worse than the rubber-stamping secret FISA Court in the US). This ruling specifically says that it's illegal because the investigations aren't vetted by judges or independent third party bodies, among other reasons.

jackgavigan 11y ago

This is terrific news! Coming so soon after the Anderson Report[1], this will add to the case for a comprehensive review and redrafting of surveillance legislation, and an open debate about how we preserve privacy while providing the intelligence services and police with the tools they need to investigate and prevent terrorism and organised crime. 1: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-06/11/surveillance-anderson-report http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-06/11/surveillance-...

diocles 11y ago

The ruling itself is available - it's quite a long read: https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/judgments/david-davis-and-others-v-secretary-of-state-for-the-home-department/ https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/judgments/david-davis-and-other...

gbuk2013 11y ago
Thanks for the link - it was long but very readable. Here is the summary of why the courts decided against the government: ---- a) [s1 of DRIPA] does not lay down clear and precise rules providing for access to and use of communications data retained pursuant to a retention notice to be strictly restricted to the purpose of preventing and detecting precisely defined serious offences or of conducting criminal prosecutions relating to such offences; and b) access to the data is not made dependent on a prior review by a court or an independent administrative body whose decision limits access to and use of the data to what is strictly necessary for the purpose of attaining the objective pursued. ---- My personal interpretation of the reasoning in the ruling is that while a more broad data _retention_ framework is OK for practicality reasons (i.e. it is not practical to know in advance that a person is suspected of a serious crime, nor is it practical to restrict retention to only such persons as it may be necessary to look at data of other people as part of an investigation targeted at a person suspected of committing the serious crime), it must be accompanied by protections at the _access_ level (i.e. such access must be tightly restricted and judged to be necessary by a qualified independent body based on the facts of the specific case).