Re: [ORG-discuss] IP Bill - the HUBS amendment

[Christian de Larrinaga]

Is Liberty and or the Law Society working on those parallel
reconstruction arguments?

C
> William Waites 
> 4 May 2016 at 15:31
> To follow this up, this amendment was debated yesterday (p. 679
> [1]). Apart from a technical point, the Minister for Security was
> worried that it would have unintended consequences: that criminals
> would seek out small providers to avoid surveillance.
>
> This argument is of course specious. There are many ways that
> criminals can avoid surveillance and this is the case regardless of
> whether the provider is large or small. The purpose of the amendment
> is to limit the damage the Act does to small providers.
>
> There is another aspect of this bill that seems to be little
> understood: the relationship between the product of bulk interception
> not being useable in court on the one hand and the requirement for
> data retention on the other. The entire setup appears designed to
> facilitate parallel construction: a technique of construction a
> separate trail of evidence for use in court by cherry picking specific
> data retained by providers in order to conceal the true course of the
> investigation. This is deeply problematic because it means we may not
> question the conduct of the sercurity services in such criminal
> cases.
>
> We'll be at the Southsider on West Richmond St. in Edinburgh from
> about 18:00 as usual, please join us!
>
> Cheers,
> -w
>
> [1]
> http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmpublic/InvestigatoryPowers/160503/pm/PBC_Investigatory%20Powers%2016th%20sit%20%28pm%29%203.5.16.pdf
>
>
> William Waites 
> 28 April 2016 at 21:30
> Greetings everyone.
>
> There are many problems with the new suspicionless spying bill as we
> all know very well. Some of you who know me may also know that I am
> the network operator of HUBS [1] which is made up of several small
> community ISPs in rural Scotland. Whatever else is wrong with the
> bill, it is clear that it would be particularly burdensome for these
> small providers to have to do data retention and indeed in that
> context it even takes on a really insidious aspect of requiring people
> to spy on their neighbours for the government, as I outlined in my
> evidence to the committee [2].
>
> Over the past while, together with Adrian Kennard, who I believe also
> subscribes to the org-discuss list, we came up with an amendment which
> would go some way towards mitigating at least this aspect of the
> bill. It was put onto the agenda today by Joanna Cherry MP QC who is
> leading the SNP's response. It can be found on page 49 of [3]. It
> says,
>
> An operator who has not been designated as the operator of an
> electronic communications network or service according to section
> 34 of the Communications Act 2003; or whose service has fewer than
> 50,000 subscribers, shall not be required to comply with a
> retention notice under section 78 of this Act.
>
> This means if you're too small to have a requirement of reporting to
> Ofcom (currently a turnover of less than £5 million annually) or have
> a small number of subscribers, you're exempt. I am trying to get a
> similar exemption into the debate about section 217 which is about
> notices for maintenance of technical capabilities.
>
> So it tries to carve out at least some space for service providers to
> operate without being conscripted into spying for the government.
>
> The committee only has another week to run, and after that the bill
> goes back to the house. It is now of vital importance to let MPs know
> that there is support for this. Doubly so if your MP is on the
> committee [4] or happens to be the Secretary of State for Scotland
> [5] or represents a rural constituency. Please write to them and let
> them know if you support this. It would be great if ORG could support
> this as an organisation as well.
>
> Best wishes,
> -w
>
> [1] http://hubs.net.uk/
> [2]
> http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmpublic/investigatorypowers/Memo/IPB53.htm
> [3]
> http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/2015-2016/0143/amend/investigatory_day_pbc_0427.pdf
> [4]
> http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2015-16/investigatorypowers/committees/houseofcommonspublicbillcommitteeontheinvestigatorypowersbill201516.html
> [5] http://www.parliament.uk/biographies/commons/david-mundell/1512
>

-- 
Christian de Larrinaga  FBCS, CITP,
-
@ FirstHand
-
+44 7989 386778
c...@firsthand.net
-


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Re: [ORG-discuss] IP Bill - the HUBS amendment

[William Waites]

To follow this up, this amendment was debated yesterday (p. 679
[1]). Apart from a technical point, the Minister for Security was
worried that it would have unintended consequences: that criminals
would seek out small providers to avoid surveillance.

This argument is of course specious. There are many ways that
criminals can avoid surveillance and this is the case regardless of
whether the provider is large or small. The purpose of the amendment
is to limit the damage the Act does to small providers.

There is another aspect of this bill that seems to be little
understood: the relationship between the product of bulk interception
not being useable in court on the one hand and the requirement for
data retention on the other. The entire setup appears designed to
facilitate parallel construction: a technique of construction a
separate trail of evidence for use in court by cherry picking specific
data retained by providers in order to conceal the true course of the
investigation. This is deeply problematic because it means we may not
question the conduct of the sercurity services in such criminal
cases.

We'll be at the Southsider on West Richmond St. in Edinburgh from
about 18:00 as usual, please join us!

Cheers,
-w

[1] 
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmpublic/InvestigatoryPowers/160503/pm/PBC_Investigatory%20Powers%2016th%20sit%20%28pm%29%203.5.16.pdf


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