[ORG PM] Fwd: ORG policy update - 03 June 2015

[Alexandra Stefanou]

https://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/ORG_policy_update/2015-w27


 This is ORG's Policy Update for the week beginning 26/06/2015.
 Launch of Open Rights Group Birmingham

On Wednesday, July 8th, Open Rights Group Birmingham will be launched with
its first meeting. The meet-up
<http://www.meetup.com/ORG-Birmingham/events/223623916/> will be a chance
for people interested in digital rights to figure out how they can work to
promote and protect digital rights in Birmingham and beyond. Feel free to share
this blogpost
<https://openrightsgroupbirmingham.wordpress.com/2015/06/28/come-along-to-the-1st-ever-open-rights-group-birmingham-meet-up/>
to help us make a success out of this event.
National Developments GHCQ spied on Amnesty International

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal
<https://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/Investigatory_Powers_Tribunal>, a
tribunal in charge of the oversight over operations of interception of data
by UK authorities, notified Amnesty International on July 1st that the
human rights organisation had been spied on by the Government
Communications Headquarters
<https://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/Government_Communications_Headquarters>
(GCHQ).

The IPT was asked by ten NGOs to assert whether they had been unlawfully
spied on by UK intelligence agencies. In its judgment
<http://www.ipt-uk.com/docs/Final%20_Liberty_Ors_Open_Determination.pdf>
delivered 2 weeks ago, the Tribunal asserted that Egyptian Initiative for
Personal Rights (EIPR) and South African Legal Resources Centre were indeed
spied on in an unlawful manner by the GCHQ, while the other NGOs, including
Amnesty International, were not. It then admitted its mistake
<https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/01/major-reversal-british-tribunal-confirms-surveillance-amnesty-international-violated-rights/>
and informed Amnesty that they had been a target, while EIPR was, in fact,
not targeted. The IPT's email does not indicate when, how long and why the
NGO was spied on.

The first judgment pushed several NGOs to demand an explanation from the
Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs in an open letter
<https://www.accessnow.org/blog/2015/07/01/access-joins-letter-to-uk-officials-criticizing-gchq-spying-on-human-rights>,
and this rectification sparked outrage once again. Salil Shetty, Amnesty
International's Secretary General, stated
<https://www.amnestyusa.org/news/press-releases/uk-surveillance-tribunal-reveals-the-government-spied-on-amnesty-international>
that '”it’s outrageous that what has been often presented as being the
domain of despotic rulers has been occurring on British soil, by the
British government” , while Eric King, deputy director of Privacy
International, made the case
<http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/01/gchq-spied-amnesty-international-tribunal-email>
that “our [the British] system of oversight and remedy has fundamentally
failed".
 Ministry of Defence requested access to sensitive data on schoolchildren
to target its marketing for the army

Following the release of a Department for Education report
<https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-pupil-database-requests-received>
into requests to access the National Pupil Database, we learned that
<http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/06/ministry-of-defence-sought-access-to-sensitive-data-about-children-in-england/>
the Ministry of Defence (MoD) made one of these requests. The national
database includes very personal informations, including full name, address,
ethnicity or details of academic progress of every students in England.

The MoD refuses to comment on the matter, but the transparency reports
states that it wanted the data to “use targeted messaging to better inform
young people of the career opportunities open to them in the Army (Regular
and Reserve)”. This falls outside the scope of the legitimate claim for
accessing the database, replied the Department of Education, which then
denied the request. Owen Everett, from the NGO ForceWatch, told Schoolsweek
<http://schoolsweek.co.uk/mod-makes-inappropriate-request-by-mistake/> that
it is not a coincidence that this request came “ at a time when Army
recruitment continues to be struggling, and when the armed forces policy of
recruiting 16 and 17 year-olds is shortly to be challenged in a judicial
review”.
 Departmental and Ministerial Announcement Prime Minister reasserts plan to
access encrypted communications

Responding to a question by Conservative MP David Bellingham on June 29th,
the Prime Minister David Cameron declared that "we must look at all the new
media being produced and ensure that, in every case, we are able, […] on
the signature of a warrant, to get to the bottom of what is going on”. He
also asserted that the government was “urging social media companies to
work with us and help us deal with terrorism”. It is not the first time
that he has talked about
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/queens-speech/11634567/Google-and-Whatsapp-will-be-forced-to-hand-messages-to-MI5.html>
the need to access encrypted communications but his announcements so far
have been lacking any explanation of how this could work without weakening
Internet security for all. Since banning encryption would be an impractical
choice, it is likely that the government would require
<http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/may/01/encryption-wont-work-if-it-has-a-back-door-only-the-good-guys-have-keys-to->
software companies to provide backdoors in their software and ask for
greater "cooperation".

This statement comes despite the news that several technology companies have
already stated
<https://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/ORG_policy_update/2015-w23#Companies_could_leave_the_United_Kingdom_if_backdoors_in_encryption_are_made_mandatory>
they would leave the UK if encryption is weakened, and only one month after
the United Nations Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression's report
<http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/FreedomOpinion/Pages/CallForSubmission.aspx>
making a strong case for encryption, which “enables individuals to exercise
their rights to freedom of opinion and expression in the digital age”.
European Union European institutions strike a deal to end to data roaming
charges but undermines net neutrality

After two years of negotiations between the European institutions, a deal
has been struck on on the Telecoms Single Market Regulation. But while the
end of data roaming charges
<http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-15-5275_en.htm> in July 2017 is
a victory for the Parliament
<https://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/European_Parliament> and for
consumers, digital rights activists
<https://edri.org/council-confirms-it-wants-to-trade-net-neutrality-for-end-of-roaming-charges/>
fear that this success came at the expense of net neutrality.

Indeed, while the Commission's
<https://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/European_Commission> fact sheet
<http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-15-5275_en.htm> hails the
enshrinement of net neutrality into law, European digital rights group EDRi
<https://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/EDRi> warns against
<https://edri.org/blurry-ambiguous-net-neutrality-deal-is-an-abdication-of-responsibility/>
the blurriness of the text, which means that we will have to wait for
courts and regulators to provide their meaning of it. The text statutes
that “fast lane” services can only be created if “necessary”, but it
remains extremely broad on its definition of “necessary”. As the
explanatory notes still have to be finalised in the next few days, there is
still a chance that the final text will be closer to the proposition of the
Parliament, which was very well-received by digital rights activists, but
which has been undermined by the Council
<https://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/European_Council>. However,
commentators fear
<http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/06/eu-plans-to-destroy-net-neutrality-by-allowing-internet-fast-lanes/>
the end of net neutrality in Europe and the beginning of a two-tier
Internet.
 Parliament's vote on copyright could endanger Freedom of panorama

The European Parliament is to vote on July 8th on the report
<https://juliareda.eu/2015/06/reda-report-adopted-a-turning-point-in-the-copyright-debate/>
written by the Pirate Party MEP Julia Reda on the implementation of the
current copyright legislation enforced at the European level. The report is
not a binding legal text but it will indicate the position of the
Parliament on copyright, just a few months before the European Commission
proposes a new text on copyright.

A particular point has drawn a lot of attention this week, and even prompted
a petition
<https://www.change.org/p/european-parliament-save-the-freedom-of-photography-savefop-europarl-en>
that received more than 200,000 supporters. Freedom of panorama, the right
to use pictures of buildings, sculptures or views in the public domain
without asking the owner of the copyright, is currently in place in most
Member States. However, if the report is adopted, following an amendment to
the report written by Jean-Marie Cavada, a MEP of the European Liberal &
Democrats party, the use of such pictures could be illegal
<https://juliareda.eu/2015/06/fop-under-threat/> other than for personal
purposes. This endangers artistic creations, creates a grey area
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/11695345/Freedom-of-panorama-EU-proposal-could-mean-holiday-snaps-breach-copyright.html>
on the publication of those pictures on social network and would mean
that Wikipedia,
for example
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Panorama_in_Europe_in_2015>,
could no longer use images of famous monuments.
 The European Parliament will vote its position on TTIP next week, as a
compromise on ISDS has been found

The European Parliament's vote on its recommendations to the negotiation of
the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP
<https://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/TTIP>) will take place next week
<http://www.politico.eu/article/parliament-moves-ahead-on-ttip-deal/>.
Officially, the vote had been postponed so that the enormous amount of
amendments could be examined, but commentators understood the decision of
the European Parliament's president, Martin Schultz, as a way to make sure
that his party, the Socialist & Democrats, could reach an internal
agreement on the Investor-State Dispute Settlement provision (ISDS). This
provision would allow for the creation of ad hoc international tribunals in
which a company could sue a state if its benefits were endangered by the
state's policy. This particular mechanism has attracted a lot of attention
and criticism from citizens and civil right groups, denouncing a blow to
sovereignty.

The International Trade Committee of the Parliament found a compromise
<http://www.euractiv.com/sections/trade-society/parliaments-ttip-vote-cleared-sd-new-isds-315912>
by adopting an amendment calling for the creation of international
tribunals if need be, but stating that “private interests cannot undermine
public policy objectives”. This should allow the European Commission room
for negotiating the creation of international tribunals, which the US
adamantly demands, while abating fears that they threaten the rule of law.
National Parliaments will have the power to veto TTIP eventually, and some
of them have already taken strong stance
<http://www.euractiv.com/sections/trade-society/france-may-block-eu-canada-trade-deal-over-isds-315911>
against ISDS mechanisms.

The next rounds of negotiations over TTIP will take place mid-July in
Brussels. The US administration aims at finishing it next year
<http://www.politico.eu/article/us-trade-vote-ttip-obama/>.
International Developments The Intercept sheds light on the NSA XKEYSCORE
programme

The Intercept, an online newspaper with a focus on revelations on mass
surveillance after the Snowden's revelations, issued a series of article on
one of the National Security Agency\National Security Agency's
<https://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/w/index.php?title=National_Security_Agency%5CNational_Security_Agency%27s&action=edit&redlink=1>
(NSA) key programmes, XKEYSCORE. Thanks to 48 top-secret documents, it
highlights the “astonishing[...] reach and potency of XKEYSCORE as a
surveillance instrument”.

The first article
<https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/01/nsas-google-worlds-private-communications/>
examines how XKEYSCORE captures traffic from fiber optic cables to collect
and store all traffic for several days. This is not only emails and
web-browsing traffic but also pictures, voice calls, traffic from popular
social media (described as a “great starting point” for research) or webcam
photos.

NSA agents, as well as similar organisations of the so-called Five-Eyes
countries (UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia), have access to “tens of
billions of records”. Internet users are uniquely identified thanks to
their browser cookies, and agents can conduct thorough surveillance
searches “simply by entering entering a person's email address, telephone
number, name or other identifying data” in a search engine described as
user-friendly and compared to Google.

The U.S. government has often argued that it needs these programs to ensure
the security of its citizens, and these documents show that indeed it was
used against terrorists. But the article shows there was a much larger
scope.

Auditing are conducted to ensure that the searches do not target citizens
from the United States, and even sometimes citizens from the Five-Eyes
countries, but whistleblower Edward Snowden declared in January
<http://computefest.seas.harvard.edu/symposium> that the programme is in
fact “free from any meaningful oversight”.

The second article
<https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/02/look-under-hood-xkeyscore/>
examined the overall lack of security of the program, with hardware
scattered all around the world, “badly designed software” and poor security
practices such as accounts' sharing. In the end, the Intercept concludes
that “if XKEYSCORE development has continued at a similar pace over the
last six years, it’s likely considerably more powerful today.”
Internet Companies Google applies right to be forgotten worldwide for
“revenge porn” but not for other search queries

Google announced in a blog post
<http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.be/2015/06/revenge-porn-and-search.html>
that it would de-index links to “revenge porn”, naked pictures of videos of
people published online without their consent, on the grounds that these
images are “intensely personal and emotionally damaging”.

At the same time, Google could be in legal trouble if it doesn't comply
with the French data protection authority's (CNIL) request to apply
<http://www.cnil.fr/linstitution/actualite/article/article/cnil-orders-google-to-comply-with-the-french-data-protection-act-within-three-months/>
the right to be forgotten worldwide. Since a European Court of Justice
judgment last year, search engines have to de-index links resulting for
nominal search queries if they are “irrelevant or outdated”. However, the
American company only enforces the right to be forgotten on its European
domains (such as google.co.uk), but not globally (such as google.com).
Google has now less than two weeks
<http://www.liberation.fr/economie/2015/06/26/dereferencement-google-a-demande-a-la-cnil-une-prorogation-du-delai-de-deux-semaines_1338121>
to apply the right globally before facing an heavy fine from the CNIL.



 ORG Media coverage

See ORG Press Coverage
<https://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/ORG_Press_Coverage> for full
details.
2015-06-26 – LibDemVoice - Willie Rennie and Greens’ Patrick Harvie support
launch of Open Rights Group Scotland
<http://www.libdemvoice.org/willie-rennie-and-greens-patrick-harvie-support-launch-of-open-rights-group-scotland-46568.html>
 Author:
Caron Lindsay  Summary: Article covering the launch of Open Rights Group
Scotland  2015-06-29 – The Courier - Calls for Scotland to lead the way
with ‘digital Magna Carta’
<http://www.thecourier.co.uk/news/scotland/calls-for-scotland-to-lead-the-way-with-digital-magna-carta-1.887132>
 Author:
David Martin  Summary: Pol Clementsmith, Scotland Officer for Open Rights
Group, calls for a “digital Magna Carta”  2015-06-29 – V3 - European net
neutrality under threat, warn rights groups
<http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2415268/european-net-neutrality-at-threat-warn-groups>
 Author:
Dave Neal  Summary: Open Rights Group encourage citizens to contact their
MEP to protect net neutrality  2015-06-29 – Business Insider - David
Cameron is going to try and ban encryption in Britain
<http://uk.businessinsider.com/david-cameron-encryption-back-doors-iphone-whatsapp-2015-7?r=US>
 Author:
Rob Price  Summary: Jim Killock quoted on the dangerousness of Prime
Minister's possible plan to ban encryption  ORG contact details

Staff page <http://www.openrightsgroup.org/people/staff>

   -

   Jim Killock, Executive Director
   <http://www.openrightsgroup.org/people/staff#jim>
   -

   Javier Ruiz, Policy <http://www.openrightsgroup.org/people/staff#javier>
   -

   Ed Paton-Williams, Campaigns
   <http://www.openrightsgroup.org/people/staff#ed>
   -

   Pam Cowburn, Communications
   <http://www.openrightsgroup.org/people/staff#pam>
   -

   Lee Maguire, Tech <http://www.openrightsgroup.org/people/staff#lee>
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