My least favourite politician of all time is Ronald Reagan. In fact, most of my political sensibilities to this day are governed by an anti-Reagan feeling. This is because Reagan epitomises for me both the hypocrisy of the Right, and everything else that annoys me about conservatism at the same time. In many ways, it defines my liberalism.
Reagan gave the impression that his time in office was about two things principally: shrinking the state in fiscal terms, and shrinking the state in terms of interfering in people’s lives. On both counts, Reagan failed epically. Fiscally, he turned a country that had proportionally the smallest debt in the western world into the debt monster the US has now become through unprecedented state spending. In terms of the state interfering in people’s lives, Reagan’s presidency often resembled an encroaching theocracy.
I bring this up in relation to Philip Hammond’s speech today because the Foriegn Secretary spoke about how the state needs to interfere in people’s lives to keep us all safe. There are many quotes I could pull, but I’ll stick strictly to the most vomit inducing:
“There are some who remain wilfully blind to the difference between the spying agencies of oppressive regimes and those of democratic societies.”
What makes an oppressive regime oppressive in the first place is their willingness to disregard their people’s rights, Philip. When you couple this with the Tories desire to see human rights cast asunder, it starts to become scary.
Looking back to 2010, the thing the Lib Dems got bamboozled on most was the Tories’ commitment to keeping the state out of people’s lives. With the mutual desire to scrap ID cards, the Liberal Democrats thought that at least this was a strong common ground the two parties shared, the importance of civil liberties. We have unfortunately seen the Tories roll back from this, pretty much starting from day one. Theresa May’s whole time in the Home Office has served as a constant example. Now Hammond’s speech today, in which he said those who wished to defend people’s right to privacy had “had their time” and that the matter needed to be settled on the side of interference.
If the state is going to butt into people’s lives and treat them like children, then I think the state needs to provide for those people as well. This is why had this been a Labour defence minister talking like Hammond did today, it would annoy me exponentially less. As a liberal I believe that the state should interfere with people’s lives as little as possible. But I also think that to take away people’s privacy – to talk about it as a non-issue as Hammond has today – and then to say that these same people need to “make it on their own” is deeply immoral. Either the state is a paternal force or a minimal one.
I accept that there is a balance to be struck between people’s privacy and people’s security. But why do the Tories seem to always fall on the big state side of this argument? I am often taunted on social media by leftists asking why I don’t just go and join the Conservative Party. There are many, many reasons for that, but if Philip Hammond’s speech today was the only one, that would be way more than enough.
I think the real issue is different. In general, we have no problem volunteering private information to the likes of Google, et al. And when we do, we have no knowledge of how that data is used, how long it is kept, and who it is shared with. The results can be intrusive. For example, recently, my phone came up with a new trick. i visit the gym regularly but do not bother to make entries in my diary. It has not stopped my phone popping up surprising messages though, telling me that my trip to the gym later in the day will take so many minutes as the roads are clear, and the weather will be fine. It can only know this through continuous tracking of my position, and detailed analysis. If i was the worrying kind, i would be worried. As it happens, I am not that bothered, as all i am seeing is the result of a computer, or several, making assumptions. No humans were involved in looking at my data and deciding what I was likely to do that day.
This is not that different in principle to what the government want to do, but as we know what they want to do, we can have an opinion. And that opinion changes with circumstances. When a criminal or terrorist act takes place, we are the first to shout about the ineptitude of the police and security services that allowed it to happen, but when nothing goes wrong, which is the norm, we argue against them having the information they need to make sure of that. I for one am fed up with criticism around ‘they knew about person X years ago, but lost track of them, which is why terrorist act Y was allowed to take place today’.
I think is that the problem is not the fact that the government wants to look at our online activities, but that we are understandably concerned about what they do with the data. And to address this, I propose a different debate, along the following lines: –
I would like to see a new government agency set up that is responsible for the collection and storage of our personal data, and for running algorithms provided by security services, including the police. This agency would not have ‘people’ access to the data or results, and would have no power to use the data and results, beyond the gathering and analysis. The agency would also be run on judicial rules, to provide a strong separation between themselves and all government departments. It would also be responsible for destroying all data on a time basis. Given the amount of data, measured in Petabytes, this would not be a long time.
When an algorithm popped up a positive result, the service interested in the result would still need a warrant to be handed the relevant data, as now. Also on a warrant basis, the information gathered on a ‘person of interest’ would be kept for a longer period in case it was needed for long term analysis/evidence etc.
And the reason for setting it up under judicial rules. The overriding rule would be that if any government, now or future, wanted direct access to the data, the agency responsibility would be to deny the request, and if that failed, carry out the ‘nuclear’ option and destroy the data and means of collection. In short, they would be responsible for preventing overt or covert mission creep.
My point is that there would be a transparency of process involved with gathering and retention of personal data, something completely missing today. There would also be complete confidence that 99.9% of data would be kept for a short period, 99.9% of people would never be affected in any way, and that only computers had processed our data, with no human intervention (This is the case now, of course. Even if GCHQ employed a minimum of 2-3 million people it would need to read all our emails, listen to our phone calls and follow our web activity, the intelligence value would be close to zero as they would each need to talk to each other on a daily basis, obviously impossible).
In summary, I am not saying I have any sort of solution, but would love the debate. It may even produce a better solution than we have now.
” In general, we have no problem volunteering private information to the likes of Google, et al”
Please speak for yourself only
I would, except i understand I am not the only user of google/facebook/twitter/whatsapp/instagram/yahoo/microsoft/etc etc. Or are you suggesting that every user other than myself have no idea they record and use personal information.
Yes. For example the right is very keen on immigration control, and, whatever else immigration control may be, it is a massive interference by the state in the lives of individuals…