From press regulation to NSA, issue is our vanishing privacy

From press regulation to NSA, issue is our vanishing privacy What a week this was. It has seen David Cameron’s former communications director, Andy Coulson, going on trial in connection with phone-hacking by journalists during his time as editor of the News of the World, German officials storming off to Washington to read the riot act about the bugging of Angela Merkel’s mobile phone, the medieval mumbo-jumbo of the Queen accepting a Royal Charter underpinning a system of press self-regulation that much of the British press doesn’t accept, and the EU threatening internet giants like Google and Facebook with a data protection directive that could end up splitting the internet into separate American and European clouds. One thing unites these apparently disparate stories: the revolutionary development of technologies that massively increase our power to communicate with each other, and as massively erode our privacy. ‘Privacy is dead. Get over it,’ a Silicon Valley boss once reportedly remarked. Some of us don’t accept that. We still want to keep a few clothes on. We believe that preserving individual privacy is essential, not just to basic human dignity but also to freedom and security. The trouble is that privacy is at once essential to and in tension with both freedom and security. A cabinet minister who keeps his mistress in satin sheets at the French taxpayer’s expense cannot justly object when the press exposes his misuse of public funds. Our freedom to scrutinise the conduct of public figures trumps that minister’s claim to privacy. The question is: where and how do we draw the line between a genuine public interest and that which is merely ‘what interests the public’? Equally, if we are to be protected from terrorist bombs on our daily commute to work, some potentially dangerous people must have their phones bugged and emails read. The question is: who, how many, with what controls? What the reporting of Edward Snowden’s leaks by the Guardian, the New York Times and other newspapers has revealed is that those checks and balances were not working properly in the United States and Britain. So a free press has struck a blow for our privacy, when legal and parliamentary controls had fallen short. But state-employed spooks are not the only ones illegitimately snooping on us. Private Eye captures this brilliantly. Under the headline ‘Merkel Fury at Obama Phone Hacking’ it shows a photo of the German chancellor grimly clasping her mobile phone. Her speech bubble says: ‘Who do you think you are? Rupert Murdoch?’ So a free press is needed to check the secret surveillance excesses of the state, but opinion polling shows that a clear majority of the British public also wants to see curbs on the secret surveillance excesses of a free press. As clearly, their main reason is the concern for privacy. Without the scandal of tabloid journalists hacking into the phones of everyone from the deputy prime minister to a murdered teenager, we would not have had this push for more press regulation. Yesterday’s Daily Telegraph displays a wonderful piece of double-think, or cognitive dissonance. In its leading article it warns, with some reason, against the possibility of future political curbing of the press under the provisions of the Royal Charter approved by the Queen in Privy Council on Wednesday afternoon, but then continues: ‘the Guardian’s recent investigation into state spying is exactly the kind of reporting that could spark a moral panic among politicians and give them cause to limit what the press can publish’. Meanwhile, its own front-page splashes the opening of the phone-hacking trial involving, amongst others, two former editors of Murdoch’s News of the World. A simple, chronological reading of back numbers of the Daily Telegraph will show that it was that phone-hacking by Murdoch’s journalists, not the more recent Guardian reporting about the NSA and GCHQ, which sparked ‘moral panic’ (interesting phrase) among the British public - not just politicians - and led to calls for more regulation of the press. But those opinion polls also show that the public don’t want these regulatory powers put into the hands of politicians. And the public are right: witness the recent attempt by the Conservative Party chairman, Grant Schapps, to whip the BBC into line in the run-up to the next general election. Now we have ended up with an almighty mess. Where the United States has its magnificent, clear and simple First Amendment, we have Queen Elizabeth II declaring ‘Now Know Ye that We by Our Prerogative Royal and of Our especial grace, certain knowledge and mere motion’ do create ‘a body corporate known as the Recognition Panel’. But all Her Majesty’s mere motion does is to establish a mechanism for officially recognising a press self-regulation body that many leading newspapers (including the Murdoch group and the Telegraph) are currently saying they won’t set up for recognition in the royally approved form. Meanwhile, press dog continues to savage press dog, and long-time fellow-campaigners for freedom of expression and human rights are all at sixes and sevens. Even today’s Washington could barely make such a mess of things. What is more, while Britain’s journalists wrangle and politicians fumble, the very idea of regulating something called ‘the press’ in a purely national framework is fast becoming anachronistic. Where does ‘the press’ end and an individual speaking on Twitter or Facebook begin? Data, words and pictures are spilling not just across platforms but across national frontiers. So the EU aims to enforce stronger protection for the privacy of all Europeans, against US giants, through a new data protection directive. But that in turn brings the danger of fragmenting the internet into multiple sovereign patches – something authoritarian regimes such as China and Russia would welcome. Privacy for some could then be enhanced at the cost of online freedom of expression for all. There are no easy answers in this dense, transnational triangle between freedom, security and privacy, but let’s at least keep our eyes on the main threat that runs through all these different stories. That common threat is the massive, digitally enabled erosion of privacy – your privacy. Angela Merkel (Beta/AP, file) Digital revolution means we can all communicate more, and be spied on more. Not just by spies Timothy Garton Ash Digital revolution means we can all communicate more, and be spied on more. Not just by spies

From press regulation to NSA, issue is our vanishing privacy

What a week this was. It has seen David Cameron’s former communications director, Andy Coulson, going on trial in connection with phone-hacking by journalists during his time as editor of the News of the World, German officials storming off to Washington to read the riot act about the bugging of Angela Merkel’s mobile phone, the medieval mumbo-jumbo of the Queen accepting a Royal Charter underpinning a system of press self-regulation that much of the British press doesn’t accept, and the EU threatening internet giants like Google and Facebook with a data protection directive that could end up splitting the internet into separate American and European clouds. One thing unites these apparently disparate stories: the revolutionary development of technologies that massively increase our power to communicate with each other, and as massively erode our privacy.

‘Privacy is dead. Get over it,’ a Silicon Valley boss once reportedly remarked. Some of us don’t accept that. We still want to keep a few clothes on. We believe that preserving individual privacy is essential, not just to basic human dignity but also to freedom and security.

The trouble is that privacy is at once essential to and in tension with both freedom and security. A cabinet minister who keeps his mistress in satin sheets at the French taxpayer’s expense cannot justly object when the press exposes his misuse of public funds. Our freedom to scrutinise the conduct of public figures trumps that minister’s claim to privacy. The question is: where and how do we draw the line between a genuine public interest and that which is merely ‘what interests the public’? Equally, if we are to be protected from terrorist bombs on our daily commute to work, some potentially dangerous people must have their phones bugged and emails read. The question is: who, how many, with what controls?

What the reporting of Edward Snowden’s leaks by the Guardian, the New York Times and other newspapers has revealed is that those checks and balances were not working properly in the United States and Britain. So a free press has struck a blow for our privacy, when legal and parliamentary controls had fallen short. But state-employed spooks are not the only ones illegitimately snooping on us. Private Eye captures this brilliantly. Under the headline ‘Merkel Fury at Obama Phone Hacking’ it shows a photo of the German chancellor grimly clasping her mobile phone. Her speech bubble says: ‘Who do you think you are? Rupert Murdoch?’

So a free press is needed to check the secret surveillance excesses of the state, but opinion polling shows that a clear majority of the British public also wants to see curbs on the secret surveillance excesses of a free press. As clearly, their main reason is the concern for privacy. Without the scandal of tabloid journalists hacking into the phones of everyone from the deputy prime minister to a murdered teenager, we would not have had this push for more press regulation.

Yesterday’s Daily Telegraph displays a wonderful piece of double-think, or cognitive dissonance. In its leading article it warns, with some reason, against the possibility of future political curbing of the press under the provisions of the Royal Charter approved by the Queen in Privy Council on Wednesday afternoon, but then continues: ‘the Guardian’s recent investigation into state spying is exactly the kind of reporting that could spark a moral panic among politicians and give them cause to limit what the press can publish’. Meanwhile, its own front-page splashes the opening of the phone-hacking trial involving, amongst others, two former editors of Murdoch’s News of the World. A simple, chronological reading of back numbers of the Daily Telegraph will show that it was that phone-hacking by Murdoch’s journalists, not the more recent Guardian reporting about the NSA and GCHQ, which sparked ‘moral panic’ (interesting phrase) among the British public - not just politicians - and led to calls for more regulation of the press.

But those opinion polls also show that the public don’t want these regulatory powers put into the hands of politicians. And the public are right: witness the recent attempt by the Conservative Party chairman, Grant Schapps, to whip the BBC into line in the run-up to the next general election.

Now we have ended up with an almighty mess. Where the United States has its magnificent, clear and simple First Amendment, we have Queen Elizabeth II declaring ‘Now Know Ye that We by Our Prerogative Royal and of Our especial grace, certain knowledge and mere motion’ do create ‘a body corporate known as the Recognition Panel’. But all Her Majesty’s mere motion does is to establish a mechanism for officially recognising a press self-regulation body that many leading newspapers (including the Murdoch group and the Telegraph) are currently saying they won’t set up for recognition in the royally approved form. Meanwhile, press dog continues to savage press dog, and long-time fellow-campaigners for freedom of expression and human rights are all at sixes and sevens. Even today’s Washington could barely make such a mess of things.

What is more, while Britain’s journalists wrangle and politicians fumble, the very idea of regulating something called ‘the press’ in a purely national framework is fast becoming anachronistic. Where does ‘the press’ end and an individual speaking on Twitter or Facebook begin? Data, words and pictures are spilling not just across platforms but across national frontiers. So the EU aims to enforce stronger protection for the privacy of all Europeans, against US giants, through a new data protection directive. But that in turn brings the danger of fragmenting the internet into multiple sovereign patches – something authoritarian regimes such as China and Russia would welcome. Privacy for some could then be enhanced at the cost of online freedom of expression for all.

There are no easy answers in this dense, transnational triangle between freedom, security and privacy, but let’s at least keep our eyes on the main threat that runs through all these different stories. That common threat is the massive, digitally enabled erosion of privacy – your privacy.