Let’s Smash Up The Guardian’s Hard Drives

The UK police recently detained a Guardian journalist for nine hours, signalling that any journalist, blogger or anybody who says something that the UK government or US governments do not like are liable to be detained under section 7 of the Terrorism Act. Those that are actually arrested have more rights than those detained in this way. It is alleged that the journalist was ordered by the police to answer all questions they asked without a lawyer and his property was confiscated, no court order required.

Now I’m the last person to defend the hypocrites at the Guardian and I’m not saying that the journalist was a choir boy either: that analysis is beyond the scope of this article. But this latest incident in the Edward Snowden saga heralds the seemingly unstoppable powers of government at the expense of press and personal freedoms.

Governments, McCarthy-ism style, have taken it upon themselves to justify draconian actions by invoking some “anti-terror” law or other. Anything goes. Governments can spy on and harass who the hell they like by saying, “National Security”, “Terror Suspect” or similar. But the greatest risk to our freedoms does not come from terrorists, it is presented by overly powerful governments. Big Brother.

Our two-faced politicians queued up to sanctimoniously condemn the illegal mobile phone hacking tactics of Murdoch’s journalists (overlooking journalists from other papers that were up to the same thing). Yet that spying pales into insignificance compared to the surveillance programs of the government itself. (GCHQ etc).

Insidiously, since the 9/11 attacks, governments have granted themselves vaguely worded yet virtually limitless powers (called anti-terror laws) over the populace whose best interests they’re supposed to serve. And, predictably, these anti-terror laws are being “interpreted” to mean whatever a government wants them to mean.

For example, in the States, smoking marijuana puts you on the terrorist suspect list, because of some alleged correlation. And being on the terrorist suspect list can, in the States, have you executed by a secret court.

Now that governments have granted themselves these powers, inevitable corruption (even if well-meaning) means that they will be increasingly (ab)used for political reasons, rather than national security reasons (which are horrific enough). In this case the laws are being used to fight the press, we are on the slippery slope.

A farcical event related to the Miranda journalist detainment was that the Guardian was ordered by the government to release its data to the government or to destroy the data. The Guardian had no choice but to choose the latter action. So the paper destroyed its own computer hard disks by angle grinder under government supervision. Believe me, on one level it would be a guilty pleasure to order the Guardian to destroy their stuff. However, firstly, the government and police should not have these extreme powers in the first place. Secondly the order was expensive but futile, because the data was duplicated off-site and off shore. Maybe GCHQ are hoping to intercept that data on its way back to the Guardian’s systems. It is certainly a warning shot to the media.

But what about our safety that the Government claims to care so much about? The terrorism threat is genuine and needs to be controlled. However ubiquitous surveillance by the State and having governments and police forces operate like the Stasi is too high a price to pay for what is a relatively small risk presented by terrorism (statistically). Society must tolerate some risk and damage from enemies such as terrorists if that means we maintain our freedoms, because, after all, we do not live in a perfect world. People will die, but millions have died to create and preserve the freedoms that we as a society are relinquishing so quickly. It is all there in Orwell’s novel, 1984. It is happening.

I’ll take a tour of some of the technology-related aspects of this ironic reign of terror – by our government, allied governments, well, virtually all governments in the Information Age.

There are two main Big Brother technologies in play right now. Firstly data gathering, secondly extracting information from the data.

To gather data governments usually cajole or force companies, corporations and other organisations to give it to them. If you are a provider of Internet services, such as BT or Virgin, you can expect the government to knock on the door and install black boxes that plug into your infrastructure. These black boxes then syphon off all the internet traffic that moves through the Internet Services Provider’s systems.

An example is Room 641A, a “Black Room”. In the States, this room contains equipment operated by AT&T on behalf of the US government (NSA) but there are many other black rooms around the US and, indeed, the world. Such rooms are operated by various services providers. These rooms copy Internet backbone traffic that contains data travelling betwixt all corners of the Earth. Not only that, but governments also listen in on mobile phone voice and other data. They can even take control, they can switch on your phone mic and listen in. That’s true even if your phone is switched off, assuming the battery has charge.

Another source of data gathering is to request information from computer services organisations such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Skype (now part of Microsoft), Yahoo, “Cloud” services providers and the like. Even for corporations with a will to resist the requests, Government demands for data can be irresistible. These organisations collaborate with the US Government, as the Snowden NSA PRISM programme documents reveal. It’s difficult to refute the conclusion that any US organisation will provide data to the US government on request. And the same goes for other organisations and governments word wide.

Also, the US government uses other governments to gather data. The Telegraph has reported that the US government (NSA) pays the UK Government (GCHQ) tens of millions annually. No doubt information flows between various other governments and organisations galore.

Then you have governments using electronic equipment manufacturers to spy. All those computer systems and network hardware systems made in China and the Far East, can they be trusted not to have “back doors” to allow unauthorised parties to hack into your systems? That was a rhetorical question, by the way. And it’s not just the Far East either. The upcoming Microsoft XBox One, kitted out with a mic and cameras, looks like a veritable NSA spying machine that, come Christmas, will be planted right in your lounge or kids’ bedrooms. More on this another time, but this is another reason to favour open source hardware and software.

The second Big Brother technology concerns extracting useful information from all those endless terabytes of data. I will come on to this fascinating horror story next week, so have had to postpone the third article on Open Source in the light of the latest Snowden-related brouhahas.