Tuesday, October 08, 2013

Machon & Drake at EU LIBE hearing on mass surveillance

Further essential viewing from the LIBE committee hearings on electronic mass surveillance - MI5 whistleblower Anne Machon on Mon, 30 Sep 2013 15:00 - 18:30. If you're watching via the EPTV site Ms Machon's evidence begins at 17:08:50. YouTube copy of Ms Machon's statement and Q&A with her and Tom Drake, whistleblower and former NSA senior executive:



Ms Machon and Mr Drake got several rare rounds of applause from the assembled MEPs. Ms Machon's recommendations to the committee:
  • Mean­ing­ful par­lia­ment­ary over­sight of intel­li­gence agen­cies, with full powers of invest­ig­a­tion, at both national and European levels.
  • These same demo­cratic bod­ies to provide a legit­im­ate chan­nel for intel­li­gence whis­tleblowers to give their evid­ence of mal­feas­ance, with the clear and real­istic expect­a­tion that a full inquiry will be con­duc­ted, reforms applied and crimes punished.
  • Insti­tute a dis­cus­sion about the legal defin­i­tion of national secur­ity, what the real threats are to the integ­rity of nation states and the EU, and estab­lish agen­cies to work within the law to defend just that. This will halt inter­na­tional intel­li­gence mis­sion creep.
  • EU-wide imple­ment­a­tion of the recom­mend­a­tions in the Ech­elon Report (2001):
  1. to develop and build key infra­struc­ture across Europe that is immune from US gov­ern­mental and cor­por­at­ist sur­veil­lance; and
  2. Ger­many and the United King­dom are called upon to make the author­isa­tion of fur­ther com­mu­nic­a­tions inter­cep­tion oper­a­tions by US intel­li­gence ser­vices on their ter­rit­ory con­di­tional on their com­pli­ance with the ECHR (European Con­ven­tion on Human Rights).”
  • The duty of the European par­lia­ment is to the cit­izens of the EU.  As such it should act­ively pur­sue tech­no­logy policies to pro­tect the pri­vacy and basic rights of the cit­izens from the sur­veil­lance of the NSA and its vas­sals; and if it can­not, it should warn its cit­izens abut this act­ively and edu­cate them to take their own steps to pro­tect their pri­vacy (such as no longer using cer­tain Inter­net ser­vices or learn­ing to use pri­vacy enhan­cing tech­no­lo­gies). Con­cerns such as the trust Europeans have in ‘e-commerce’ or ‘e-government’ as men­tioned by the European Com­mis­sion should be sec­ond­ary to this con­cern at all times.
  • Without free media, where we can all read, write, listen and dis­cuss ideas freely and in pri­vacy, we are all liv­ing in an Orwellian dysto­pia, and we are all poten­tially at risk. These media must be based on tech­no­lo­gies that empower indi­vidual cit­izens, not cor­por­a­tions or for­eign gov­ern­ments. The Free Soft­ware Found­a­tion has been mak­ing these recom­mend­a­tions for over two decades.
  • The cent­ral soci­etal func­tion of pri­vacy is to cre­ate the space for cit­izens to res­ist the viol­a­tion of their rights by gov­ern­ments and cor­por­a­tions. Pri­vacy is the last line of defense his­tor­ic­ally against the most poten­tially dan­ger­ous organ­isa­tion that exists: the nation state. There­fore there is no ‘bal­ance between pri­vacy and secur­ity’ and this false dicho­tomy should not be part of any policy debate.
Ms Machon's point in the Q&A session that she signed the Official Secrets Act to save lives and protect official secrets was particularly well made - she did not agree to protect unofficial secrets and cover up the criminal acts of spies which caused the deaths of innocent people.

The official version of Mr Drake's statement to the committee is at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/document/activities/cont/201310/20131001ATT72162/20131001ATT72162EN.pdf. The video of his statement is available on Youtube and I posted a copy here yesterday. He is a terrifically compelling witness.  Any politician, media commentator or anyone else seeking to excuse mass surveillance and secret illegal, criminal or unethical government behaviour in this context should be compelled to explain themselves under Mr Drake's questioning glare. We could call it the Tom Drake test.

No comments: