It is quixotic to assume that any population can be fully protected from terrorism without operations such as Prism in place: the puppeteers of organised crime are now utilising technological methods to pursue political or religious extremism and it is therefore time for those who protect us to make extra efforts for better results.
I began writing this article on a train last month when we were passing through Cheltenham, home to the UK’s electronic eavesdropping and security agency, GCHQ. It’s now been seven weeks since we learned the organisation has been surreptitiously accumulating intelligence from the world’s biggest internet and communications companies through a secret operation, Prism. It had been alleged that GCHQ sidestepped the law to gain invasive information about UK citizens, but just four days ago the Intelligence and Security Committee confirmed the data-gathering centre’s activity has “conformed with GCHQ’s statutory duties” and is lawful.
It seems, however, the dust is yet to settle.
The use of Prism raised a number of ethical issues about such direct access to millions of people’s daily activity and personal information – though hullabaloos are, of course, an inevitable corollary of leaks and exposés. We know that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been able to obtain data for the last six years, without the knowledge of users, who would assume their correspondence was private. The Guardian believes the British agency generated nearly 200 intelligence reports from Prism in the last year, and that these reports were passed on to MI5 and MI6.
However, an alarming number of people have attempted to extirpate any positivity or reasoned endorsement and support that has emerged from these recent revelations. Our own intelligence agencies are making every effort to identify and prevent terrorists from committing extreme acts and crimes. “GCHQ operates within the law and it should be supported, not damned,” said Ben Wallace in The Times. Exactly.
Indeed, the NSA confirmed Prism has been made available to spy organisations from other countries, including GCHQ, and describes the service as “one of the most valuable, unique and productive accesses” of intelligence. The director of national intelligence in the US, James Clapper, held that the information collected under this programme “is among the most important and valuable intelligence information we collect, and is used to protect our nation from a wide variety of threats.”
And Norman Tebbitt’s felicitous words in his Telegraph piece last month eloquently summarised his indifferent and nonchalant attitude towards the whole situation: “If the price of not being blown up by a terrorist bomb is that some geek in GCHQ or the police might know that I sent a Jaquie Lawson birthday card to someone, well, I am willing to pay it,” he said.
One problem I do have with GCHQ is that they seem to be taking entirely nugatory steps to remedy the concerns raised with Prism’s legitimacy and importance. All they have said, officially, is simply that their operations are “within UK law” but have missed this perfect opportunity to outline just how imperative their work is to the general public’s daily security. I do believe, though, as we move on and further our understanding of the relationship between GCHQ and Prism, that those initially outraged by this “invasion of privacy” will become familiar with the fact that their safety is just a little more important than the ultimate destination of a Facebook message: their puerile objections and concerns with Prism will gradually become quiescent.
Prism is no doubt full of latent, vital benefits that are yet to be revealed and soon today’s skeptics will appreciate its services. If you’ve done nothing wrong then you’ve nothing to fear, but if you have then accept the consequences: come on, that’s what a just and fair society should look like.
Oscar, your a coward
I am not
I will take the slightly increased risk of being blown up as the price of not being spied on.
If your fear is so great that you want to be watched all the time to be protected you have the right to sit in your basement, trembling, with cameras on you at all times. You do not have the right to give up my freedom so you will feel a little less scared to go out in public.
You have handed victory to the terrorists, well done.
Tebbitt gets it right – they’re probably not even looking at things written by people that they have no reason to consider as security threats
COWARD
it’s so easy to criticise government operations, particularly when they involve people’s privacy or have been kept secret from the public. This needs both subjectivity – is it ethical? – and objectivity – is it necessary? – before we conclude either way. people may well, fairly, point to the likes of stephen lawrence or george orwell though, but if operations like these are carried out under maximum scrutiny and to the best possible standard, it can only be a good thing
It’s just like the EU: people don’t know enough about it / we’re not told enough about it to hold a strong, informed opinion
I’ve got to say, half the words in this report I didn’t understand (Quixotic? Corollary? Extirpate?) But I think I get the gist of the argument.
The problem I feel with Prism is not that it itself is a bad thing- though I am uncomfortable with the idea of political bodies having access to my private correspondence, a lot of people on the internet had already guessed that the governments were doing this- But that this is an easy stepping stone to new and nastier forms of information control and observation. The practices of escalation means that, in some way, opponents of the state will find a means to circumvent this- and governments will be less afraid to use more invasive means of intelligence gathering if their previous attempts have met with little resistance.
It is also irritating that the Americans are gathering the intelligence, while the British agencies essentially beg them for scraps. I’m not saying I want a British version of Prism-It ust annoys me that, as the forefathers of the intelligence agency, we have fallen so far.
It’s an interesting argument, and thank you for bringing it to the table
The question which needs to be answered is how many lives is our privacy worth? If this information has stopped a single death, is it worth it? How about 100? 1000? We don’t know. What we do know is this data is being collected. We know that there were 200 times when our secret services decided the risk was great enough that they felt the need to request additional information. We know that this evidence has not been used in a trial, if it is even admissible which I doubt. Many of us suspected that the national security service was willing to spy on the general public in the interest of national security. Personally, I don’t care – if I post something on the internet, I assume it is public. If I’m emailing someone, I know there is a chance that conversation will become public. This is the age of almost total freedom of information, and it comes at the lack of our privacy – whether it’s Google Analytics, Facebook setting or general targeted advertising, what we view is always logged and recorded.
So, is it worth it? I think so. I can understand why people aren’t, but the question of ethics they should ask themselves is the first one I did – how many lives is your privacy worth? If seeing your angry email to your old boss or porn browsing habits were known to someone who would never share them, are you so embarrassed you would put someone else’s life on the line?
Something to think about for sure.
Did any people who had concerns say they were worried about their angry email to their boss? This is known as a strawman argument: https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman
What we’re really worried about is dissent, (peaceful) protest and illegal but moral activities (not sure if they’d actually bust someone cuz they mentioned weed in an email but who knows). Also, since you don’t know if you might get arrested, you might be too afraid to talk about such things.
Please note that people might object to a 1984-ish reality with full surveillance now, but if you gradually ease them into it, they won’t even notice. Milgram’s experiments also gradually moved from a low shock to 450 volts…