Then it seems that MPs might need to start deploying and using crypto in their everyday work - in a similar way to some mainstream journalists [1][2]. Which is a real shame and a serious distraction.
Also, the Prime Minister and most members of the cabinet are MPs. I wonder if this disclosure affects them too?
Then it seems that MPs might need to start deploying and using crypto in their everyday work
All MPs official business should be a matter of open, transparent public record. Nothing they do as part of their every day work should be encrypted or private. The singular exception should be matters of national security, and even then their communications should be recorded in a secure manner with full accountability under the law if there's any suspicion of wrongdoing (e.g. lying to parliament about another countries WMDs).
Imagine you are a whistleblower and want to leak data to the public. UK Libel and defamation law doesn't apply to things MPs say in the House, and MPs can much easier get press attention than some random blogger. Hence it makes sense to work with a sympatheic MP to get the information into the public sphere.
In this sense, the MP is acting more like a journalist with a source. The source should be protected.
You're suggesting that MPs should be able to conduct business in secret in case the tabloid press lie about someone. Have you ever heard the phrase '2 wrongs don't make a right'?
No, he's suggesting that MPs should be able to conduct business in secret because portions of the public have concerns that they have good reason to raise with an MP yet where even the mere knowledge of the basics of the conversation might negatively affect their lives.
E.g. lets say a drug addict who has successfully managed hid their addiction wants to offer their perspective of new drug legislation to their MP. Or a paedophile who wants to gather support for promising treatment option. Or someone with family or community ties to extremists of some shade or the other wants to propose ways of reducing their influence.
There are a multitude of situations where there might be bad fallout from public knowledge about what a persons raises with their MP even if what they raised is positive for the wider community.
Yes, secrecy also allows for negative effects, but it's not nearly as simple as just writing off the benefits of being able to guarantee privacy.
None of those are anonymous in the face of internet surveillance by entities like the GCHQ or NSA. They are superficially anonymous (or pseudonymous, which isn't the same thing) from the perspective of other users interacting through the intended public interface.
It does if you want people to talk openly, without guarding every word for fear of giving away sufficient detail for someone to be able to identify them. And simply because a lot of people will be unable to trust you if the communication is monitored.
Why not? Lobby your MP, have identifying details removed from the public record. We do it with all sorts of records with confidential or secret details.
Partly because of the rule that MPs are only supposed to deal with their own constituents. Therefore they require your name and address on communications...
No she's stating that there is a long-standing convention that constituents are able to contact their MP in confidence and that this communication should be kept private to protect the constituent rather than the MP.
Things that one may argue should be public: Financial backing of legislators, minutes of official meetings and hearings, votes, legal arguments for spying, and so on.
But the conversations occurring behind the scenes which ALWAYS facilitate dealmaking will never be public. It wil happen in backrooms of pubs if you insist they communicate via telnet.
Political parties need to have their own private communications in order to function; it's impossible to do strategy if you can't conceal your hand even slightly.
Treatment of constituents issues needs to be private as these are often sensitive and personal (housing, family law and benefits issues).
Official business should be on the record. In part the Alistair Carmichael trial is about the boundary between political and official.
> Then it seems that MPs might need to start deploying and using crypto in their everyday work
They should probably do that, especially for anything sensitive, whether or not GCHQ monitoring them is legal, both because the GCHQ might do illegal things and because the GCHQ might not be the only entity surveilling them.
OTOH, given Parliamentary sovereignty, its fairly trivial for Parliament to deal with the problem that GCHQ monitoring of their communications is currently legal, and this doesn't seem to be something where just the opposition is unhappy (while the government has been positive on the ruling so far, at least some Conservative MPs have been quoted as concerned about the ruling in some of the published reports.)
Actually I think that MPs should be using encryption and if they adopted it as a result of this situation then that would be one positive outcome. Otherwise we quickly get to a point when the only possibility of privacy is if the communication is classified as secret by the government.
I'm actually fine with that. in fact, public officials should probably use open communication. it's the save rule that allows my employer to read my work email as they wish.
Maybe this could be a good thing? Maybe if the MPs feel that they're under surveillance like the rest of us they might not be so quick to support global spying.
Nah. They'll just change the law to exempt themselves. The easiest way will probably be to define a new "class" of citizen, who is above all of the Surveillance, which is for the cattle.
They'll enshrine this so deeply in law there will be no going back without violent revolution.
That won't happen though, as the cattle are distracted and well fed - and any move against them which fails will only serve to further their interests, for you are simply a terrorist who hates the British values of suspicion, greed and prejudice.
If the opposition has too good a reputation to be called a terrorist, I.e. They're in government, famous, etc., again, easy, say they're a paedophile and nothing they say will ever matter again.
Either way, don't expect positive change from this. Expect May to hop up on a podium and explain that human rights prevent us from keeping you safe from the terrorists and so we must pass a bill that allows us to shoot dangerous people and the ten billion illegal immigrants who are taking your jobs right now, on sight, oh and by the way we're exempt from Surveillance.
> The easiest way will probably be to define a new "class" of citizen, who is above all of the Surveillance, which is for the cattle.
Various parliamentary immunities and exemptions already exist; extending these to include enhanced protection against surveillance would not be defining a new class of citizen. To the extent such immunities create a new class of citizen, those existing immunities and exemptions have already created it.
And, in any case, this is the United Kingdom we're talking about, a country whose government acts in the name of a monarch and whose parliament consists, in addition to a house of elected members, a house consisting of "Lords Spiritual and Temporal". Its hardly as if differing classes of citizens is a novel concept -- its already a rather overt feature of the British system.
Nah. They'll just change the law to exempt themselves.
Due to the nature of the blanket surveillance GCHQ is indulging in (tempora etc), this is impossible to do with any certainty - everything is swept up and stored. So they could pass a law, but it would be meaningless.
Positive change comes in small steps, and starts with awareness, don't be so cynical.
UK is still a EU member. Article 20 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of European Union states that "Everyone is equal before the law". Article 21 further expands on forms of discrimination prohibited by the charter.
The UK has legally incorporated the requirements of the Charter via the Human Rights Act.
Even if the UK were to exit the EU, the UK is also a member of the Council of Europe, and bound by the European Convention on Human Rights, and discrimination under the law is also prohibited by Article 14 of the ECHR.
I agree with you - this will be swept under the class rug, like so many other crimes the British people have allowed their politicians to commit in their name, for centuries.
I believe it will catalyze the political class, such that there really won't be any way but the mainstream way from now on. We'll see political factions fade away over the next few years, until there are only a few, or maybe eventually just a couple, of the same slight shade of grey ..
The scariest thing about today's intelligence agencies is not the possibility of governments using them to exert totalitarian control. The scariest thing is that the intelligence agencies don't seem to even be loyal to their governments.
They might perhaps feel that their role is more like a combination of the Ministries of Love and Peace, and thus loyal to what they see as the government. In fact, one might even say that they are loyal to their government, rather than to their nation.
It's not quite as simple as that. Mass surveillance alone harms free speech because it affects people's behaviour. If you know everything you say and do is recorded, you tend to say and do a lot less than you would otherwise.
Intelligence agencies are full of smart people. They know that secrets this big can't be kept indefinitely. Once the cat's out of the bag, then the panopticon comes into effect.
They have factored in the effect on free speech into their decisions.
And it's not even that bad in principle. In a more perfect world you want to have is freedom of speech and an organization like S.H.I.E.L.D. which secretly scoops all communication to protect the public from greater threats. Unfortunately, what we got instead is a kind of Hydra that lacks ambition for world domination.
Educate yourself! The GCHQ is a reprehensible organ of an authoritarian state! Under no circumstances must we allow those who grant themselves the privilege of extreme secrecy, the further miscreant privilege of rampant social engineering - of which censorship is but a minor aspect!
The UK government does block websites, but I think you are right that it doesn't amount to censorhip in the sense of blocking criticism of the UK government itself.
I'm not sure what role GCHQ has with regard to blocking websites or if we know what they actually advocate. They have been known to do things clandestinely ;-)
This quote is taken egregiously out of context.[1] You could still say its a nice quote, but its power comes from an appeal to authority, in this case, a founding father, and despite the fallacy inherent in such a tactic, the extent to which it does not apply to the liberties we talk about today suggest we could do much better than to bring it up every time.
Err but old Ben's quote is invalid here. We didn't surrender, nor did we vote for this, nor did we want this, nor did we expect this, nor do we have any power to stop it or prevent it from being introduced.
Eventually the UK may decide that no one should be monitored without probably cause, but suggesting that any portion of society, especially those with power, should be exempt from a regime the rest of society is subject to is a worse proposition than having pervasive monitoring applied equally.
I remember chat to a HOC worker and there was some disgruntlement that the staff had to have Developed Vetting (ie TS clearance) and there is very little checks made on MP's
Presumably you are aware of this, but let me spell it out: The MP from that article hasn't been involved in any violent crime, much less anything resembling terrorism. She's just an active participant of civil society and an opponent of the police state. Of course, unlike actual terrorists, this makes her a real threat.
We have the same thing in Germany, the domestic intelligence services keeping tabs on MPs. Of course Germany has a rich tradition in this kind of behaviour.
Heh, what if the PM itself is acting against the interest of the nation! We need to know! Maybe the GCHQ is saving us from rogue actors at the top level! Didn't see that coming?
And now we have Jeremy Corbyn being openly denounced as a "threat to national security". This has got Russia Today laughing at us, pointing out that we'd be condemning the same language if used by a regime we didn't like.
That's what you get when a secret spying-oriented Court has to rule on this. It's like asking the FISA Court rather than the Supreme Court whether the NSA can spy on American citizens and politicians.
Actually, while it may be a "spying oriented Court", there should have absolutely no surprise here.
(EDIT: To be clear: I find this spying disgusting, but that does not change the fact that there was no good legal basis for assuming MPs were somehow protected)
The idea that MPs were above being spied on had no basis in law whatsoever. The only reason some people believed this was that Wilson said so, and nobody challenged the fact that no law was passed to actually prevent the security services from carrying out such spying. But the public statements of the prime minister has no legal standing whatsoever to set policy for government departments.
That MPs for decades have believed that the word of a politician not packed up by actual laws, or even actual government policies passed on to the security services, would in any way protect them is what is bizarre here.
On the upside, someone finally challenged it in court, rather than just blindly accept the "of course the Wilson doctrine still stands" nonsense.
Also, the Prime Minister and most members of the cabinet are MPs. I wonder if this disclosure affects them too?
[1] http://www.tcij.org/resources/handbooks/infosec
[2] http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/hacks_hackers_security_fo...