Chicago and Chicago progress. Yep. Thanks, and I'll be posting longer versions of these interviews to find those just go to
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See you guys next week. You can always find the Katie helper show every Wednesday 7 p.m. On WBI
You
Thank you very much Katie
Thank You Katie helper and you are listening to
WBA I radio that's ninety nine point five FM
right here in New York
The time is just about 8 p.m. On this Wednesday evening
That means it's time for another exciting edition of off the hook
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could they would
Very very good evening to you the program is off the hook
Rob T firefly here with you in the WBA I studios I am joined here by Voltaire hello and
by Alex good evening and
Today as as I'm sure everyone who's listening is aware is is the summer solstice
And I gotta tell you guys it's been a long day
All right, I'm sorry, I apologize, but
But yes, it is the longest day of the year and and in some ways it feels like it
There's certainly a lot going on our correspondents Emanuel and Kyle
Remain on assignment in Reykjavik Iceland. They're getting up to all sorts of hijinks and adventures there about which we'll be
Interrogating them next week upon their return
But until then it's just us and we'll have a we'll have a guest joining us a little bit later
But for now, let's uh, let's catch up on a little bit of what's going on in the world
Let's see what it what
What's going on that interests you today Alex? I heard it was the I heard it was the summer solstice
You you did. Yeah, I don't remember where
But I did hear that
There's actually been quite a lot. I think going on today
I'm excited to have our special guest on because
What's going on over in the UK and in the EU in particular is
I think going to be a very enlightening discussion
But I think in terms of general news, there's there's just you know, a huge amount of of things going on
Huge huge huge and I say that sort of as a pun, too
I'm talking specifically about this strange
You couldn't really call it a data breach, but maybe like a data revelation with 198 million voter records
being exposed to the world
uh data that related specifically to the GOP's
Analyses on behalf of the trump organization. I'm sorry the trump campaign
During the election cycle. I I often get the two of them confused the trump organization and trump campaign
They're all rather trumpy, but uh, yeah, it's it's kind of a data waterfall a data eruption
Story here in gizmodo political data gathered on more than 198 million u.s. Citizens
Was exposed this month after a marketing firm contracted by the republican national committee stored internal documents on a publicly accessible
Amazon server
It goes on to mention that this this data is being used as a tool to
That's that's pretty incredible, um, you know, there's so
You know voltaire and I were talking ahead of the show and really there's there's just so much confluence
uh of subjects between all of the stories that we will be covering a little bit later today and that we are covering now
And in particular, you know, what I think is very interesting about this story is
Is that it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's
In particular, you know what I think is very interesting about this story is
The absolute lack of repercussions that are applicable to a campaign organization
For a breach of something of this magnitude or you know, the negligent handling of data of this particular magnitude
I mean, it's it's extraordinary
um, you know what came out of this article and what came out of I think various news stories is that
the
Campaigns generally operate as these very low budget shoestring fly-by-night type organizations
That put security and privacy
Not second, but you know, maybe penultimate or you know last itself
In terms of priorities because they just don't have budgets for security
So they mishandle mistreat information and yet at the same time they're amassing massive amounts of user data
I'm, sorry voter data
Uh and combining it with data from various other sources to be able to make predictive analyses about
uh key states and key counties and as
And in particular about whether certain voters in certain counties
Will swing one way or another so this data is extremely valuable and extremely interesting for campaigns
In that it allows them to predict
Turnout and voting
Um potential on key issues like gun control oil and gas drilling
um
you know a whole host of issues for
it's
uh, incredibly important too because it could
Swing an election one way or the other
On the basis of very few votes because you know if we're talking about swing states and we're talking about maybe something like 77 000 votes
This data is arguably priceless
Yet it's mistreated it's mishandled it's left out for the public to view
And when you combine voter registration data, which is something that is generally publicly available
as
2600
pointed out in the last issue
Once you combine that data with other data points you can begin to amass
really accurate picture of people's preferences
and
What voting well rather what campaigns are very interested in doing and and this was I think really a revelation from the story
Is matching voter registration data with social media profiles?
Yeah, this is uh, that's that's what's really interesting about this data
You would think of data at one organization somewhere just being one set of data can you know collected one way?
That's not what this is. This is uh, basically huge amounts of data from sources all over the place whether they be
Your standard sort of political information collecting entities
combined with data gotten from social media
Online posts from things like reddit
And all these things that they're pulling together in this massive database to not only work out, you know
Your your vital statistics name address whatever but where you are politically where you are religiously
all sorts of information about you and your lifestyle and whether you might be a good target for
political advertising in some way or another
Yeah, and and the sources from which they acquire this data are you know, really shown to be quite questionable
Some of them have really questionable provenance and yet it's being combined and utilized in this particular manner
And it's really transient because the data itself will become quite stale after a number of months
but I go back this again, I think this idea of of
Combining voter registration data with social media information is something that is really telling
And it gets to the root of a real issue here, which is how much data we're really giving away
when we
Access social media when we post on it, you know
We don't reasonably expect that that data is going to be mined and combined with voter registration profiles
To predict where we are going to stand in one way or another on particularly contentious issues
And then you combine that perhaps with purchasing data maybe from something like, you know, Duane Reed
You know the the data that you give every time you go and swipe your Duane Reed card
I mean all of this can put together an incredibly accurate profile about a particular person
And we really have no regulations restricting that in the United States
um
It's something I think we will get into a little bit later on in the program as to you know
What europe is doing with particular types of data mining and the restrictions on that and the security safeguards that have to be put in
Place proactively when you mine and combine that type of data as a quote-unquote data controller, but in the United States
it's really something that is just
you know left out into the open and left out into the the ether so to speak and
And when this type of data is left out in the open, I know I don't really think that we're going to see major repercussions here
I mean we may see some public backlash about this
But you know this story I think should have gotten a lot more attention than it did
But the new cycle being what it is changes quite frequently lately
absolutely repercussions are really something to think about regarding this because
Not only is this sort of thing not really regulated in in any meaningful sense, but there is no accountability
It's not like uh sort of organizations that store your medical data have to uh contend with things like HIPAA
Which is the regulations that that protect ostensibly protect the privacy of such things. Um, there's really nothing
Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe there's really anything uh governing an organization like this and what they can do with this
Like incredibly powerful data that uh that they glean from all over the place. Yeah, that that's that's quite true
and in
You know in this particular context
I think it's also important to point out for the sake of accuracy that there does not really appear to have been a breach
Of this particular server that was left publicly accessible on AWS
but it was just open and
I believe a forensic analysis at least at the time of writing of this story indicated that nobody had breached that server and nobody had
accessed it so
You know, there are state data breach notification laws
I think that 39 states now have state data breach notification laws and that could arguably come into play
given the amount of personally identifying information that was
Available on this particular server and if you can imagine the cost of having to notify what was it?
198 million americans of uh particular breach. I mean that would be really really crippling
Um, so, you know here we're in the united states
This these state data breach notification laws arguably do not apply to this particular situation
But even if they did
In what an organization would probably do is simply dissolve itself so that it wouldn't have to comply with this particular law
um, and
When we are looking backwards and trying to impose a penalty that is a hell of a lot different than forward-looking types
of security regulations that are designed to
force you to think about information security from the outset as opposed to
After proverbially hits the fan
All right, really something to think about uh, and on this uh on this sort of
topic, um
But uh regarding our friends across the pond in the uk
Um, we should uh, we should have joining us jim killick from the open rights group. Jim. Are you with us?
I am indeed
Thank you very much for letting us keep you up late and uh joining us on off the hook
Um now jim, uh for those for those unfamiliar. Could you explain a little bit about open rights group and what they do?
Yeah, so we're a digital rights organization
we uh
work on privacy free speech online all of those sorts of issues very similar to sort of work of
groups like eff in the united states
That same sort of agenda
Uh, we've been going for 10 years. We have around 3 000 people
Uh supporting us
And helping our campaigns. We're mostly member funded and we've been working on data protection
Surveillance post snowden as well as things like copyright
and rights for uh hosting, you know people to be able to host things that
uh, you know
Attracting huge legal penalties and so on. So, uh, right all the way to through to net neutrality issues and things like that as well
So jim, this is alex here. How long have you been involved in the open rights group?
Uh about six or seven years now, yes quite a long time fantastic
It gets busier
And it certainly seems that you know, probably even more serious
Now I think than when I started so when you started with the open rights group six years ago
What what was it about the group and the issues that it was addressing that that led you to the group?
Yeah, I I think
It was very obvious that privacy issues were going to get more and more serious
Yes
Um, I don't think I suppose then that we would be in such trouble as we are now
but it certainly seemed that you know, there was a lot of potential for problems and there was a need to kind of
think about this in
uh a wider way and I think also
Really understood sort of thought about the
Uh way that things like openness
Uh had you know given us opportunities?
Opportunities
And that this sort of kind of hadn't really been translated into political understanding
Uh about 10 years ago. I it's still a problem there, you know politicians are not
They kind of know the internet's changed things, but they don't necessarily understand the benefits
versus the problems
How to balance those things and quite how critical this is to the sort of society
Will become they tend to still be a bit fixated on
Particular social issues and and and headlines generated around it
Well, you bring up a rather interesting point because today was quite a busy day in the united kingdom
um
And you know having lived there three times now, um, I always know that you know, whenever a new government is formed
um, there is something that is particularly peculiar to this monarchy and I was wondering if you could go into and give us a
Little bit of background about this thing this peculiar thing called the queen's speech
So it's it's a bit of nonsense on one level, uh, you know, the queen gets dressed up turns up with other royals
and uh parades are aimed with lots of people in in uh, you know regalia
And there's a whole load of ceremony around this
But the purpose of it is for her to say what the government is going to put into legislation
So she reads a speech that's not actually hers
It's written by the prime minister and she reads out what the government intends to do for the next one or two years
And that's essentially what's happened today
um, and you then
Uh, you know, you get all the briefing notes afterwards, of course
and you start to understand what the government's up to and what we have seen, I mean, it's quite a change because the
Uh before the election, uh when the conservative party were expecting to sweep the board
Get a big majority and be able to pass whatever legislation they wanted. They were talking about a very very
Kind of hardline clamp down on the internet
um, they
still are
But they watered it down to
a little bit more around
voluntary proposals for censorship
Kind of you know getting companies to do more to censor things online
As opposed to sort of really really tough legislation to make them do these things
So essentially you're saying and correct me if i'm wrong that these aren't necessarily the queen's words
But they are theresa may's words and the queen is theresa may's sock puppet
Yeah, that's right
That's one way of putting it I guess
Well, she's whoever's
Sock puppet is is uh in actually in charge
um, it must be a slightly demeaning thing you'd think but uh, you know, given that her political opinions appear to
Change every election. Yeah
But there it is. So he does
This is this is uh, this is her role
So there were a couple interesting things that came out of this today. Um,
Perhaps you could talk a little bit about this digital charter that was referenced
Yeah, I mean, this is a really peculiar thing
This I mean, you know, it seems to they say they want a digital charter
uh, and that they want this to sort of
Make britain a really safe place, uh to go
Go online and to make sure children don't see inappropriate things and all the rest of it
But they then fail to explain what the real mechanism behind this is because it's not a piece of legislation
so it looks like some kind of
Voluntary agreement where they get all the companies to sign up and say, you know, we'll remove stuff within 24 hours
We'll if we get a complaint, you know, we'll investigate we'll check
You know, we'll do things to protect children
Whatever those things are but it not be backed by legislation as such that seems to be where
They're going and of course that means that they're pushing companies to make more and more judgments about
The legality of material, of course, you know and companies want to do that in a sense they don't want
bad material
upsetting material on their websites
but
uh, you know the way that the governments do this they
in the uk we have
Something called the counterterrorism internet referral unit
and it refers
It looks for material. They believe
Has been published by extremists or is it expanding?
expanding
Extremist views of course. Nobody wants that but these this is just the police remember they find these
links and content they report them directly to facebook and google who then
Check whether they're breaking terms and conditions and remove it
and
you know
That really that really is kind of
On one level that is the police
acting without
Any sense of there being a judge involved and getting material censored in bulk
And you know while we can all understand why they want to do this
Uh, you know, that's not very accountable
Yeah last week we discussed how sometimes when you export the the role of censorship to these companies
It's even worse than when it's the government censoring because you have at least with the government doing it
You have no democratic
You had democratic recourse to stop them from doing it, but if it's up to the company's judgment
It's like based on their bottom line and they don't want to upset the government
So they're going to censor more than they normally would
um, we uh, like for example, we see that like with um in china with where they export stuff to uh,
wechat and the censorship role and uh,
YouTube where they actually where they take down a lot of stuff that would arguably be fair use but uh,
They're have their own policies as opposed to government runs
so with uh
The company with corporations have it being came to play the role of censor you have
Even more censorship than if it's government
yeah, I think I think that's natural because
uh, particularly if the if the company sees
uh, you know financial or other downsides whether that's the goodwill of the government or
The program of their customers if they they feel that there are downsides
To not censoring material and those are worse than the downsides of occasionally getting it wrong
Then they will censor and they will not worry about the mistakes so much
um, and of course mistakes are are always less visible, you know, they're much less visible and it's
You know people accept it as quote mistakes unquote a lot of the time
so
You know, I I think they are naturally going to be more cautious
and the the problem that we have in europe right now is that germany
France and britain and at least until this, uh,
until today had
very concrete plans to
Uh impose fines on companies if they weren't taking down material fast enough
And of course if you're doing that if you're fining companies for not censoring things quickly enough
Uh that then you've got you know, you've got all those problems in in in spades, you know, you're going to have huge amounts of
material being
uh censored
because it's
Uh, you know you you're avoiding a fine essentially
Yeah, and this I think
naturally leads us to
Another topic that came up in the queen's speech today as well, which is this
Commission for countering extremism which sounds somewhat amorphous to me
Yeah, and you know, I think as open rights group had um mentioned, you know
It's it could be somewhat positive in that. This could be a forum to generate ideas
but I think given the tenor of what theresa may's proposals have been in the past that we
We should naturally be a little bit skeptical about this particular proposal
You know as if we're talking about
You know countering extremism
With our own propaganda. Well, that doesn't sound so great
but if we're talking about countering it with teaching people how to think with education with utilizing rhetoric and
And arguing against these types of extreme
Extremisms, uh, that sounds like it would be eminently reasonable to me
But you know a commission for countering extremism sounds like it could veer
Pretty quickly into the realm of censorship and then we have the very same issues that that you have just described, you know
I'd love to get your thoughts on on what this sort of amorphous
Commission for countering extremism is likely to to be or produce
Yeah, I I have literally no idea at this point. I mean nobody does
It sort of appeared and uh, you know
I mean on the one hand it could be a way to collect ideas and understand the problem more
She's saying quite a good idea
It's not clear if this is a permanent thing or a sort of temporary thing
You know, is it a commission like uh, we used to have royal commissions where people produce a report and recommendations
Or is it something that's only on a rolling basis going to try to direct?
Right, you know counter extremism from my perspective
It sounds like it could be something that could really run ukip and the bnp into the ground
Don't you don't you think if we're talking about countering extremism might be somewhat counterproductive
Um, maybe you could if you could briefly describe for our for our users what what those political parties are
Yeah, so we have uh, we have the conservatives who are the sort of uh equivalent of republicans in the states they are
um, maybe a little bit towards the center to you know,
Than the republicans but they're essentially the party that has
people from very socially conservative backgrounds through to
free marketeers
Um, it's that kind of grouping
uh
That that's trying that generally tries to be pro-business and lower tax
Then we have the labor party who are again sort of left of the democrats probably a little bit
um
You know a little bit more towards bernie sanders particularly at the moment
um
And they they're they're the sort of social conscience if you like
Then you have the liberal democrats a smaller party in the middle between the two who are essentially liberals
uh, so classically liberal, um
fairly pro-market
But also very good on civil liberties. Those are sort of three main parties and you also have parties in scotland
And wales as well and the scottish nationalists are being quite influential at the moment
So there's a quite a mixed bag despite the fact we're first past the post
And you know that has a sort of majoritarian aspect that you have in the states, too
Despite that we've got quite a mix of parties at the moment
Um, although a lot of them are small and that's making it quite hard for the parties to get majorities
that's what's led to this sort of
Uh slightly more amorphous set of policy suggestions today from the government
They don't have an overall majority and they're kind of
They they don't really know. Uh
You know what they can get away with at this point
it wasn't one of the oddities of the election with the minority government that it that they have to go in a de facto coalition with
the um, the ulster democratic party, which is like this, um,
evangelical far-right christian
party that
um, and they like
You know you're saying that uh, they had to water down uh, because they got a whopping in the election that they watered down a lot of
the uh, draconian, uh censorship measures in their speech, but
It seems like be going to coalition with such a socially conservative group might want make them want to put more like censorship
things on the table
Yeah, I think I think the reason is that the
they don't know how much they can rely on the on the
Dup, and also the majority is still very tiny. So you if you had sort of 15
Conservatives rebelling saying this is too much. They could suffer defeats
So it just it's just not a good idea to push things
That might be too controversial until you've kind of tested the water and understand
Uh how it's going to pan out
And labor, I think are a lot more determined now to defeat the government. So where they were quite
um
You know, they're pretty rebellious and going in different directions themselves a few months ago. That's less the case now
So you could you could have some of these things?
Result in in disputes that they the government can't win one interesting little thing about the dup
uh, as you say there's they they I mean
They're really they're they're a kind of very they're an oddity because they're based in northern ireland
So they're kind of like the part of ireland that wants to be in the uk
And that's really the only reason that party exists
um, but they they are also, uh from the protestant tradition and evangelical as you say and
One of the things that we've noticed that's just disappeared
from the from the government's, uh
List of things to do is is sexual education sex and relationships education
Uh for children, you know to make it compulsory
In the uk that people get this kind of education and there was consensus before the election from all of the main parties
That they needed to do this
not least because they were getting very very wound up about
uh children accessing pornography on the internet about potentials for bullying on the internet lots of
these kinds of social issues and
while they were trying to answer these things with quite quite bad ideas from our perspective like
Uh pushing internet filtering and things like that
uh
they the one thing we did think they should do is to
Get better education for kids. They were better prepared for the sort of things they might encounter
Online you could understand it a bit better and that's been dropped and I do wonder if that's because of this alliance with the dup
yeah, you mentioned also you mentioned how um,
Jeremy corbyn had been taking the government
Kind of like in a sanders type very progressive direction on economic policies
But when it comes to technology issues, how how has the labor government been especially under corbyn's labor?
The labor opposition been under corbyn's leadership
really confused to be honest, I mean
The thing is that they
You know, they're they're old school socialists
um, so
a lot of them are not really they're kind of not really there with
The impacts of technology which you know, there is definitely an agenda for the left
uh thinking about the consequences of automation
you know as well as the
possibilities for
Sort of social change that come from technology. There's definitely a kind of set of things for them to think about but they haven't they haven't really
Uh fully understand all of that. I would say
I think their main thing has been a sort of gut reaction. They don't like surveillance. They don't like the secret state
uh, they they're they are
Skeptical about security measures that are heavy-handed
So that's a good starting place for us, you know that they have that but labor has been split between a sort of
authoritarian
uh nanny state sort of socialists who who want to
Kind of you know have a database of everybody in order to work out what problems they've got that kind of people
um
Versus the the sort of the ones who are sort of a bit more civil libertarian, but also more left. So
They they tried trying to be
Reconciling those positions and it's been very hard. So in the debates we had about the investigatory powers act
um a year ago
They had a traditional
centrist quite
Authoritarian character who really couldn't see the problem with gathering everybody's metadata for the police to use in the future
It couldn't see a problem
You know as long as it was authorized. Okay. What why were we complaining? This was this so-called snoopers charter?
Yeah, that's right. And I mean, you know, they they're already they were already gathering masses of metadata for
Uh, you know gchq and ansa to share
for purposes of terrorism and national security
Uh, but they wanted the same thing for the police
You know, they they wanted to have the police to be able to access a machine
to interrogate metadata from isbs in order to tell them who might be useful to
uh, you know
investigate
so it's kind of like
You know, hang on, you know, you've got these massive superpowers for
You know national security and that's bad enough
Now you want to give this to ordinary police?
without a warrant
Yeah, it does seem really, you know, just
Beyond the pale crazy frankly, you know to allow, you know law enforcement to have that kind of access to data
Um, you know here in the united states
We've recently rolled back the restrictions that internet service providers have with respect to the monetization
of users activity
And that was one of the things that frankly concerned a lot of people which is you know
Your web browsing habits your activities, you know, if all of that can be monetized and sold to let's say a third-party
Data broker or an advertiser who's to say that law enforcement then couldn't purchase it and mine it themselves
But it seems like under the investigatory powers act which actually did in fact pass into law
um
you know the police would just you know have access to a database to do exactly that without even having to
You know deal with a shady middleman data broker to obtain the information. So yeah, it seems seems totally totally nuts
um, you know and
To to roll back for a second, you know, you talked a little bit about
You know things that were missing from the queen's speech arguably because of the compromises that had to be made in order to form a government
um, theresa may talked a hell of a lot about regulating the internet in terms of encryption in terms of pornography
Um filtering and whatnot. There was none of that it seemed like in the speech today
But i'm wondering was there any mention of encryption or its regulation at all?
No, there wasn't and we were we were expecting them to mention it but the thing is they don't actually have to so
We thought they might more from the point of view of uh,
kind of publicity
um
The reason being that they they have powers on the books to deal with this they have. Um
They have something called under in the stupus charles, they have something called technical
capability notices
Um, which aren't active yet. They need to be activated by what they call secondary legislation, which is basically like tidy up
notes
You know for how it's going to work in practice
Um where they know that parliament isn't going to be that bothered about the detail
So they they put it into these sectors sort of secondary legislation where it kind of goes through on the nod
Uh more or less sometimes not even with a vote
um
And the technical capability notice is allowing them among other things to order the removal of quote electronic protection
And quote which which means encryption so they have the power already
To just not activate it to instruct companies
to remove
the ability of the customers to encrypt
Or to alter the way that the encryption works in some way whether that changes the algorithm
Or perhaps more likely
in terms of engineering
Back doors of some kind
Into the content, you know within the software so, you know, you can imagine
Uh, you know, you've got an end-to-end encryption software that maybe you kind of add in a further end so to speak
But that's the kind of thing we imagine them trying to do
Um, but if you are a company with more than 10 000 users in the uk
They claim the power to instruct you to do this stuff. And of course that means actually
Every american company that operates in the in the uk
As far as our government's concerned they have the powers to order them to
Re-engineer their software now, you might kind of think well, that's ridiculous. I'd like to see them try
And of course, that's a good point, right? You know, he's why should anybody?
Uh, you know listen to that and I I suspect most companies would contest that
but uh, you see if you see I think what's what's really happening is that
because
the
most, you know, lots of countries are seeing this as a
Uh, they see as an international problem, but more specifically a problem
with u.s companies
And the u.s law enforcement similarly sees it as a problem
with u.s companies
Not cooperating with them, you know, particularly the fbi and so on
um, and I think so I think what is uh happening here is that each country is
starting to
Advocate for change in the u.s in order to bring pressure on the companies
to make changes whether that's through law or through
sort of
Being more cooperative so to speak with law enforcement
And you see that with the statements in the g7 recently, but also
The five eyes met in australia made the same comments. So there's clearly this kind of movement of governments
To change the way that technology companies
work with them
Uh, that's a real ambition here. I think
You know, it brings up an interesting point to me because you know with the the technical capability notices
You know, are you aware?
of these requests being made on a
Particular showing of something like probable cause or reasonable suspicion of committing a crime or engaging in an act of terrorism
Or is it simply you know, just because we want the data
Is there some sort of threshold showing that needs to be met?
in order for
One of these technical capability notices to issue
So there's only two thresholds
really, which are
You serve 10 000 uk users
and
It's practical for you to implement what we're asking
Those those are the only thresholds. So
um
In terms of accessing but it's it's a kind of it's on a sort of two layers to be fair to them
so there's a the technical capability is
one layer
and then to actually access the content requires then a warrant so
um
The the the kind of arguments about actual suspicion, uh, you know probable cause
Uh those sorts of arguments are for the warrants, uh to access specific individuals data
So that's the way they see it. I think you know, you think of this as a sort of arrangement with a traditional telecoms company
Um, you you can kind of see it's like well, we need to be able to put in the taps. So technical capability
Notice effectively is the capability to tap
And then the actual taps on specific individuals. That's the bit that gets
More sophisticated more tested warrants
And this this is all made much more interesting
Um by all the other angles that uh that are affected and affect this um, there was a story that came out
um on friday as reported in the telegraph about the
europe the the
european parliament
which is
um working toward protection, um against breaking uh, breaking encryption and putting back doors in
um
The story, uh, the story reports meps have tabled laws that would forbid countries in the eu from breaking the electronic protection
that prevents security services from reading messages sent via
Things like whatsapp, um, the plans would also impose obligations on tech companies that don't currently apply encryption to messages to do so
um, this of course goes right against any anything that theresa may was saying about
um
putting in back doors and creating no safe spaces and and so on so um, and this this seems all
Very interesting and also kind of weird because no one seems sure what this means for the uk with the whole uh brexit situation
Um, are you familiar with this? Yeah
Yeah, I mean, I think I mean the new privacy
Directive moving now towards a regulation is is it's a very interesting
um bit of law
um
And you know its aim is essentially to
Make sure that people's communications are private in transit. That's the idea of it. So it's all about
You know essentially not, uh, sort of reading people's electronic mail not sending them electronic mail without consent
It's all those sorts of things
um, you know that basically
communications should be uh
Uh
Trustworthy and you shouldn't you know, you shouldn't be expected to be tracked and and and so on so it also deals with things like
A setting of cookies and so on but yeah
so the european parliament are trying to you know, say well look, you know in the modern age if you're
uh, if we're trying to
Make sure that people's that we have integrity of communications and that they are
Secure and private then we shouldn't just take the word of the network operators for that
Actually the companies who are transiting these messages
Should have a duty
To do it properly and encrypt and I think that's a perfectly reasonable suggestion
I suspect um
In a sense what the european parliament is proposing is slightly narrower than it looks
at first glance because if you're talking about
encryption in transit
Um, that doesn't tell you too much about what what happens at the other end so, you know
facebook can
Transmit its communications between users in encrypted form
Between facebook and your web browser or app
um
That doesn't mean that
Those communications are not visible to facebook. I mean, of course it does if they implement it as they have done in
You know in chats and so on but most of the time companies are not trying to do that
Um, it's a relative, you know, it's a relatively small number of cases where people are doing it
um
It would of course make it very hard for governments to argue for back doors into this
Uh, if the products were built in such a way as to make that hard
Um, but most of the time it wouldn't have the effect of kind of locking law enforcement out completely
I don't think I don't think that's the intention of it
It's more about saying look if people should engineer their products
How they want and people should have the right to privacy to the extent that they want it
I think something that's interesting here is uh, like we were talking about a lot of time when people think about censorship or surveillance
We usually think of the government, um
Doing it but here we have an example of the government
them banning
stopping governments from
Surveilling through back doors, but also
having the government like prevent, uh surveillance with things like um requiring intent encryption and uh banning selling of
history, so I think it gets to like um, like
It kind of makes us have to reevaluate our thoughts about like government's role in um, surveillance and stuff
It's like we have the right hand of government
Uh censoring and surveilling, but we also have the left hand of government like
Stopping corporations from censoring and surveilling
Well, yes, and the thing is as well though, um, the european parliament are very pro-citizen
uh, the european union as a whole
has
You know, certainly not a perfect record on fundamental rights privacy all the rest is certainly not but it does have mechanisms to try to
Make that work whether it's the data protection supervisor or the charter of fundamental rights
And the fact you can take take these laws
And challenge them in court and then you have the courts who are really keen on high
human rights standards because
They're just setting out with a set of institutions and they have to convince
All of the courts across the european union that they're doing this properly
um, so, you know, you've got a really good environment there for
pushing standards up and
You also to certainly say you don't have the same pressures in the
European union for surveillance and so on because the european union at this point
Has less involvement with uh law enforcement. It does exist and it's growing but it's relatively new and it doesn't certainly doesn't
Have you know massive?
uh
Organizations and budget with huge budgets like the nsa and gchq breathing down their necks saying
Don't don't do that because that's going to screw up our
National security strategy. They don't have those sorts of pressures either. So
Um at the moment, they're quite good for pushing the standards up. I think the privacy regulations are
About you know, some really really thorny problems. We've got because you know
People are being you know, their web browsing histories turn out to be really valuable for mobile operators as well as
uh, potentially isps
Um and for advertising companies, they all want a piece of it
The advertising companies are completely running riot really when you think about it with the way that you know cookie based tracking beacon based tracking
Uh, you know works, you know, nobody's really asked for consent. It's all a bit of a myth
Um, nobody really knows what happens to the data, but nevertheless
You know hundreds of thousands of you know
Hundreds of millions of people are being tracked by these systems more or less without their knowledge
It's it's a scary time for sure. Jim. It sounds like it. Um, you know, I think it's it's pretty clear from what you've said
that it sounds like the e-privacy directive and the
Inherent security features that it would like to build into the way in which our networks operate and our products operate
Seem to be almost directly at loggerheads with the agenda of the theresa may government and or rather the hodgepodge government
That's that um was basically the hand, uh in the queen's skirt today
Operating as her uh as a sock puppet. Thank you for the visual alex, uh any time any time?
Um, I do want to say you mentioned one thing that um, I think you know bears a little bit of mention
Of explanation to is mentioned. This was the e-privacy directive. I think we should all track this
But it's moving towards a regulation and my understanding of the regulations is that these will be immediately implemented in the european union without any
Requirement of national legislation to implement them as opposed to a directive. So directives have to be implemented by national legislation
regulations automatically become law in the eu and then this gets even more complicated and
Confounded by the notion of brexit and whether this will ever ultimately apply if it does pass through the regulatory process and become a regulation
uh in the uk
so theresa may um
And her hodgepodge may may in fact get their way if brexit does in fact, uh occur
Aren't they uh, eu uh parliament, isn't there aren't there resolutions non-binding to begin with?
I was yeah, so the at this point the european union are
proposing amendments to
Legislation and they will have to argue it out with the member states in the european council. So what happened is that?
It is complicated you end up with the european parliament having one position on the draft legislation
You have the commission who are like the bureaucrats
Having their original proposal and then you have the member states
Come up with what they want
Which is usually about 100 miles from what the parliament and the commission want or certainly from what parliament wants. It's certainly complicated
Um and all the more important I think for people to support organizations like the open rights group
Jim, could you tell us how we can get in touch with the open rights group?
And and how we can support it and track it and and understand more closely what's going on?
Yeah, absolutely. So if you go to open rights group dot org
Uh, that's where you'll find us and you can from there you there's a big button saying join today
Press that and if you want to sign up if you want to support us, then please do
Uh, you know more people the better basically
um, absolutely and
You know and i'm for
I'd also just sort of say, you know another organization if you're interested in what is going on in europe
Have a look at european digital rights. That's edri.org
They're also really good on these issues and you know, if you particularly if you're into the sort of
Nuts and bolts of policy they're they're really worth, uh, you know following as well
Okay. Well, um jim, we're going to let you get back to your life, but thank you so much for joining us today
Um, thank you. We've been speaking with jim killick from the open rights group
Um jim, thank you very much and have a very good evening
You too. All right. Bye now
Well, that was quite an enlightening conversation. I have to say, um, you know, they seem to do
Excellent work really tracking these issues, you know, they're the uk equivalent of electronic frontier foundation. Absolutely
um
And you know eff does a great deal amount of a great deal of great work
But then the world is a big place
And I think as jim has made, you know a very good argument for you know
We need more organizations like this that are tracking the issues that are following them closely that you know
Operate locally as well and really understand the nuances of these particular issues. Yeah a friend of the show cory doctorow actually
Explicitly started the he's one of the co-founders the orgy and he explicitly built it on the model of the efa
Excellent, and uh, we'll be keeping an eye on all of this. Um, some of you some of you might ask
Why are we an american show, uh paying so much attention to the uk?
and that is of course because I think in so many ways the uk has been the model at the forefront of everything that's been
going on in sort of the surveillance and
and self-surveillance world and
Countries like our own tend to follow along with what they're doing to a great extent
Well, they absolutely do and and to to an extent we've even gone farther, right?
I mean
you don't have yet as I as far as I know things like the link nyc kiosks over in london, which is a
You know a centralized database of surveillance primarily built on
Uh with the purpose of advertising in mind so, you know that that I think will quickly go over there
But this these types of notions and things have of surveillance, you know, the uk is very much a surveillance
centered society
You know, there are cctv cameras everywhere
uh it
I mean you walk around london late at night
It becomes really difficult to find a place to to urinate publicly without without being on cctv
I have to say it's something that comes to you know
The forefront of everybody's mind when you you know, when you leave the pubs at either 11 or 12
Yeah, the london olympic, uh mascots look just like cctv cameras
That's right. I do. I do remember that. Yeah quite an interesting coincidence. It's all uh, pretty amazing
We've got a little bit of time left
I think we can maybe fit in a few uh listener phone calls if you would like to uh get in touch with us
Give us a call at three four seven three three five zero eight one eight
Or uh, send us a note at hacker radio show on twitter
And uh voltaire will be keeping an eye on that for us and we'll uh, we'll see if we can get to your questions and comments
Well in the meantime, you know, maybe we can talk about this pirate bay. Yes name case which is you know, kind of bizarre
Yes, the u.s. Embassy is threatening a costa rican domain registry over the pirate bay's domain
um the uh
Basically, the pirate bay dot cr is one of the pirate bay's many many backup domains. Uh, this one located in costa rica
And uh the registry in costa rica says it won't comply without a court order and has written to the ikan organization
That's uh, the the basically the parent umbrella organization of all the domain registries out there
It stands for the internet corporation for assigned names and numbers, which is actually a california-based not-for-profit corporation that that operated under
an amorphous
Document or called an affirmation of commitments that had signed with the department of commerce a long time ago
That just sounds like something in a healthy relationship
Yes, it was certainly an unhealthy relationship that they had unfortunately
Yes, it's this is a fascinating case too because it calls into question
um the legitimacy of the u.s influence over other top level domains on the internet namely dot cr
And something to remember specifically with respect to ikan is that
Dot cr is a cctld or a country code top level domain, which isn't necessarily regulated by ikan
And what the u.s government did not do in this particular instance was go to the local courts and get a court order
Instead it tried to exert some kind of diplomatic influence
Over the cctld itself which then caused them to go and complain to ikan
And the funny thing about this entire situation is if you want to give the punch line about this rob if you recall it
The
The domain name actually didn't even relate to the real pirate bay
It was some kind of you know spoof or a copycat domain name and nobody really figured that out yet
There was this diplomatic scuffle, you know that involved ikan the embassies letters going back and forth personal accusations and slurs
According to the various articles that I read about it. And in fact, it really didn't matter
So so the dot cr was not actually run by the pirate bay organization. It doesn't appear to have been
incredible because I I assumed it was because they they've always they're always burning through domains because uh,
people keep uh complaining and to the registrars until they until they uh,
Get rid of the pirate bay. Of course the piratebay.org is uh, the known main domain of the pirate bay
That's right, which is run by an internet registry known as the public internet registry
You know that operates dot org which is based in the united states
So it seems like there was a lot of wasted effort and and and time
Uh, and arguably credibility has been lost here as well
um, you know another thing that's quite interesting too is these cctlds are often sort of havens for free expression and
And questionable activities as well when it comes to things like copyright infringement
Um or counterfeiting, you know dot se or the sweden top level domain operated
Under similar bases as the dot cr meaning that you can't just go over to this registry
that is the database of the domain names and ask that they
Disable a particular domain name without actually going to a local court and getting a local court order
so
If we were really concerned about this costa rica has laws about copyright infringement
We could have brought a local lawsuit got an order from a judge to remove this website from the registry
And simply presented it to the dot cr cc tld. That's their policy. That's what it requires, but we
Instead tried to exert some sort of arguably undue influence on the registry and they really pushed back
They pushed back and they complained to ikan and they complained
to uh
The ambassador to costa rica and this became you know an embarrassing situation
Embarrassing indeed because it doesn't look like they were expecting to get pushed back at in any uh in any respect
No, not at all
Wow, okay. Well, we're running really low on time. So unfortunately, we won't get to those phone calls
Um, but I I will put a couple of things out there
Um, very happy solstice to those of you who have uh celebrations going on today. Very happy pride this weekend
um here in new york a big day on on sunday and
Yeah, just keep uh, keep sending us email oth at 2600 dot com
Keep letting us know what you think and interesting stories you hear about and also music that you might like to see
Here featured on our outros our ever-changing outros if you're a musician and I know there are some of you out there
um get in touch with us oth at 2600 dot com we would like to play your music and
Tweet at us hacker radio show is uh is where we are on twitter
And yes for off the hook for emmanuel and kyle in absentia
For voltaire and alex right here
For myself and uh for the for the greater good
Have a very good night
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