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Great. I have the fantastic
honor and the great pleasure here
to introduce to you someone without
representation.
Can you push the button, please?
Because something will be happening.
This is a hendrickx, I
pronounce it right, good enough, good
enough, and he's actually
studying in London, currently living
there in the British environment.
And from that perspective, in a kind of
gonzo journalism style, can
I say tries to
solve one little question.
How did Great Britain how
did the UK end up in a situation whereby
that is snooper's charter?
Presumably some of you don't know what
the super charter is, but the
superchargers actually about the
sneaking charter that
the British government decides
to get into.
He's going to give you an introduction to
that kind of situation.
It's a very uncomfortable situation
and you will explore it from the inside
out. Please give a warm welcome.
Yeah, light the Fuze
and put it in play.
Let's roll.
So I'm living alone.
I'm studying there and, um,
I'm not a legal expert, I'm not a
technical expert, but I do try our best
to figure out why we end up with
a situation where we have a surveillance
law that many think of
maybe the craziest we have seen in
democracy.
But I want to start with this this
picture
every other week or way university, I
encounter something like this.
It's a mobile CCTV unit.
And if you haven't seen on top of it as a
camera
and in London, there's approximately one
camera per person living there.
But there's still the need for a car with
a camera on top of it.
And this is only the old model.
The new one has six one six cameras
around it and more equipment in sight.
So for me, it was a pressing
question. How can a country where
this is the more or less unchallenged
status quo
publish and make a law
about regulating and re
reestablishing the whole surveillance
regime we've encountered
the past years?
So what I'm going to do in the next half
hour is first give us a sense
of what this new law is that
the so-called Investigatory Powers Act.
And, of course, why is it so dangerous?
Why should we be concerned?
And then maybe the more interesting part
is I I'm trying to explore
how a democracy can pass such a law,
how a democracy can end up in a situation
where a majority support such
a law and learning from that experience
how we could fight back, how we can
educate our decisions.
And, of course, are the first part.
We start, um,
the then home secretary, Theresa May,
introduce the bill in 2015, late
2015.
And the bill really touches upon
all different sorts of surveillance on
hacking, interception of communication,
access to data sets, Internet data
retention, encryption, and, of course,
that reregulate supervision.
And recently, the government government
described the bill as a bill that
provides some of the strongest
protections and safeguards anywhere
in the democratic world with an approach
that sets new standards for openness,
transparency in oversight.
That's a bold statement, and
we will see if that holds true in
the next minutes, but because
it's such an exceptional law, I will go
over each of the different areas
individually and we'll start with
hacking.
Government doesn't quite call hacking.
It codes with a wonderful euphemism,
equipment interference.
And it's available to regional and
national police HQ, MI5,
MI6 or the usual suspects
and the normal procedure.
Every warrant issued for for hacking
needs the approval of a so-called
judicial commission, the person supposed
to increase protection to prevent
overreach.
But that's a very questionable, as I
explained later, when I get to the
supervision part and
the reasons for which such a such a
warrant can be, issues are very, very
broad in terms of national security,
purpose of preventing crime or
interests of economic well-being.
So far in the interest of national
security, but you can see a very, very
broad term, as you are dealing with here,
and if you're sitting on the British
Isles, the British authorities
might even issue a bulk warrant.
So with a single warrant, give the
ability or allow a certain agency
to hack a whole number of devices
in a in a reasonable of a group of
people.
And one such Iran does obtain
the means with which the desired
information can be extracted are.
Unrestricted, any conduct
which it is necessary to undertake, so
the restrictions placed on the different
agency are extremely
little.
That means, for example, if the British
government believes that there's a
terrorist group in Stockholm planning
an attack on Great Britain, it could
potentially issue by ground to hack
devices in the whole city to find out
this or to listen to this
group.
And this power of surveillance goes
hand-in-hand with the next topic, which
is intercepts of communication,
which whether the who and
how and when of the approving of
the bombings are so similar to
the hacking regime.
And it's rather
rather surprising after after years of
knowing or after years of reports
being published that the different
agencies misused their
power of deception in
this new bill. This poll was reinforced,
reinstituted.
And again, if one of the members of the
communication is not on British Isles, we
can issue Bayfront.
But in this context, we also need to talk
about encryption because interception,
encryption go hand in hand, of course,
and the ledgers listen to concerns
there are strong legal protections and
support for encryption.
No
business can be asked to help circumvent
encryption, actually.
And it even goes so far as to say
that if you are
developing a certain kind of encryption
technology, the government might give you
notice and then you need to inform the
government of any planned changes for the
future. So, of course, they have time to
adapt their technology to your increase
in technology.
Interesting approach.
I would say, um,
the next part is the access to data set.
And what this means is it's
available to only the Secret Service, not
to the police services, but it
gives them the power to analyze and
exit public as well as private
data sets and also create them
or combine them to come up with
a new revenue analysis.
And that means, for example, the next
time you visit your GP, you
might need to consider that the er
the information he has about you
are available to a government agency
or the information you give to your
fitness tracker might at the time
be analyzed by a government agency.
Um, and there
are some further limitations in the bill
in the code of practice, but it
explicitly states that many
innocent people will be affected by this
kind of analysis.
Now, the danger of affecting many
innocent people is imminent.
The next and maybe most outrageous part
of the bill, which is the so-called
interconnection records.
And put simply, their data retention on
steroids, if you visit any
website that your your interconnection
providers now need to save for one year,
that Romania visit, when you visit it
from twice where and
further metadata
and messenger
services monitored at the same.
So also be safe then who you contacted
when from which device, where that
person was located.
Now, this sounds like a very
powerful tool and you might think
that only a handful of people have access
to this kind of surveillance technology.
Well, I've listed other departments.
Having access to it
are 48, and
my favorites are the Department of
Health, the Food Science Agency, the
Gambling Commission. And, of course,
what we do without it, if they hadn't had
access, the Northern Ireland Ambulance
Service and Health for Social Care Trust.
So another comes the best point,
you don't need the approval of a judge,
you just need approval of a senior
officer in your department to access
this data.
That's actually true,
but but if the state is allowed to get
such power, how are these powers
controlled?
We have this wonderful new investigative
investigatory Powers Commission, which
unifies the work of three three
previous bodies.
And those were commissions on different
kinds of interception and all different
kinds of surveillance measures.
This new commission unifies this work,
and
normally one commissioner needs
to give his approval for for issuing
around like the hacking warrants or the
interception warrants.
And this is the so-called double lock
system where not only the state
secretary, you need to approve a warrant,
but also judicial commission.
No.
It's good to have something like a
supervision, but we need to keep in mind
all members are appointed by the prime
minister and I have very good faith
and theories are made to only put people
there she can trust.
Um, and I also doubt that
this commission is able to exercise power
for scrutiny in in 2014,
The Guardian published half a million
authorizations for interception.
Warrants were issued.
And then if your commission has less
than 100 people working of
normal 40 hour week, you only
have seven minutes to look
over each warrant and assess whether or
not to give its approval.
So I have very, very high doubt this
commission can
exercise power for scrutiny.
Nevertheless, this commission was
declared a great improvement over the
previous situation and
other often cited improvements are
increased transparency because you have
codified these surveillance measures.
So it's an improvement if you do
something previously unlawfully and now
you have it by law.
You also have increased safeguards
because if unify the legislator
legislation and control mechanisms,
I doubt that's very helpful of these
control mechanisms and very effective.
And thirdly, accessing data without
a warrant is not a criminal offense.
That's good. I mean, that's something
but should rather be the status quo
instead of something we ask for.
Right.
And lastly, the House of Lords in late
summer was able to include another
improvement.
But I need to show you.
I don't know who things can find
it. The great improvement.
It's this it's the first sentence
setting out that this bill
may be used to interfere with privacy.
So the great improvement was that they
now have reinstated that
this interferes of privacy, and therefore
I have said that they want to respect
privacy and this is
the first sentence. So it must be very
important.
No.
This is this gave you a very quick
overlook of what the bill does,
and I want to go to
the next part, how this
has an impact on myself, really.
I spend a lot of my time on the right
building its first hand house library in
London. And incidentally, it's also
the building that inspired George Orwell
for the Ministry of Truth and his
favorite novel, 1984.
And you can really see why.
And I know if
I would be caught an innocent citizen.
I've done nothing
to to really weaken the state power.
I wrote some articles against it.
Like any student I went to, protests
are holding this talk, very rebellious.
But because of the new regime, I don't
know how I'm how I am viewed,
I, I might need to adapt my
actions just because I
think they have such a great power that
it's reasonable.
It's reasonable for me now to adapt my
actions, even though I've done nothing
that should concern anyone.
And precisely because this new law is no
longer a measure against the threat of
terrorism, where had the moral excuse
of war, that doesn't affect me anyway.
Now, this is really a measure against
crime in all sorts of ways.
And on top of all of that, we have the
realization and from Snowden
that we cannot trust these agencies,
specifically the British agencies,
to remain inside the boundaries of the
law.
And even though
this law puts nearly no boundaries on
them, I
rather have them than not.
But I can't trust the agency to stay
inside these boundaries.
Now, international, you might say
that this is just part of a larger trend,
unfortunately, because we've seen, for
example, Germany and other
countries not taking
the hint from Snowden to maybe rethink
their surveillance regime, but
rather reinforce surveillance
engy regime.
But but this law in particular is
in scope and size, unmatched by any
other regime in a democratic
and democratic country.
Neither the Patriot Act nor nor the
emergency measures and fraud France
include such far reaching and and
intrusive measures.
And I would I would say.
Very ironically, this
delegitimizes our criticism
or the criticism of our state heads
of other despotic and undemocratic
regimes for censoring their
Internet, for surveying them
because.
Countries in the country in the midst of
us is doing the very same, and China has
already pointed to this law
in defense of its own mechanisms
and surveillance measures.
Now.
Theresa May said this, if you remember,
and I don't really agree with it,
I think this is wrong.
This doesn't really fit.
I rather said it.
This bill establishes the most intrusive
surveillance measures anywhere in the
democratic world, and it attacks
the principles of openness, transparency
and oversight,
but not having understood the extent of
the bill. I want to ask the next
question. How can democracy pass such a
law?
And for that, I first want to give
you a quick look how the British
democracy works.
We have a parliament that's made of the
sovereign, the House of Lords and the
House of Commons, where the
sovereign is the queen, but she doesn't
really interfere with politics.
The last time she did it, she calls
somewhat of a civil war.
The House of Lords isn't really important
either through the House of Commons being
the most important part in the system.
And another really important point
to understand is that the UK
isn't governed by a constitution,
but rather by custom and common law,
that that means that there's not a single
document that regulates
who has how much power and
where the boundaries. But it's rather a
system of of experience,
of
the expectation that
different actors will behave the same as
they did before.
That is combined with a first past the
post electoral system.
That means the whole UK is divided into
different districts and to win a simple
majority in this districts represents
that district in parliament or in the
House of Commons.
And that has produced a very powerful
House of Commons controlled by the
Conservative Party, who got
37 percent of the votes but 51
percent of the seats.
And because there's not really any need
for two thirds majority to change
anything that gives a total control
over things.
And that leads us to next
to this next question.
Why? Why was the law passed?
Well, the simple answer is other laws
were expiring and they had to pass a new
law.
And the previous bill was also blocked by
then coalition partner, the Liberal
Democrats.
And now with a new government, they
didn't need to rely on them anymore.
Additionally, the Labor Party
was in opposition and simply
didn't put up a fight.
It actually voted in favor of the bill.
The bill passed with a majority that
that's rather reminiscent of North Korea.
And
the Labor Party really seemed to me at
least distracted by its own power fight,
fire fights in the leadership to solicit
its own party
and lost the sight of this important
fight.
And later, the House of Lords, the second
chamber, didn't really improve much.
Well, this is only the
meta analysis. And I wonder to rather
understand, why
does the Conservative Party think that
such laws need it?
Why does a democracy think this
law is a sensible measure?
And the first thing to
understand, I think this is my my first
hypothesis is that the political
culture, political culture in the UK is
based on trust.
If you have a political system in which
there's no constitution in which for
hundreds of years, for centuries,
things stayed the same because they
always stayed the same, trust
in the system and trust in
that diligent behavior of your opponent
is essential to the working of the state.
That, of course, also leads to a long
tradition of thinking.
If you've done nothing wrong, you have
nothing to hide, because if everybody is
behaving so in a way to preserve the
democracy, you have nothing to hide from
because everybody is just behaving in
a good way and trying to do his or her
best.
Secondly, the political system puts the
focus on other topics, we
have the two two large parties that
the Labor Party and the conservative
Conservative Party who are able
to win certain districts
based on this this old kind
of US two party
system where in cities
Labor Party wins and rural regions
Conservative Party wins.
And then there are some other parties,
some regional parties like the Scottish
National Party or Northern Irish Party,
and they
succeed in winning their districts and
their regions.
And their focus obviously lies
on representing this region,
of representing their local
communities.
But what this doesn't do is say
there's 10 to 15 percent of the
people really interested
in these topics, really, really angry
about these laws where they have no way
of being represented in parliament.
If in all the different districts they
only have 10 percent of the votes.
That way, they can't really have a
platform in parliament.
And thirdly, especially in this year,
all the attention, the media attention
and also our attention was dominated by
the Brexit referendum and the
US election.
Maybe incidentally, the bill was
passed between the time of the high
time of the Brexit referendum and the US
election, but that's only I can only
guess, probably in probably an incidence.
But what this what this created was
that the public outcry that ensued
was to lead only after the bill was
already passed. There was a petition of
more than two and four thousand people
to challenge it. Again, that was too
late.
But no one has been had been listening
to the debate except for a very
small circle of people.
Now, I think
you have no idea of of why the law passed
and and I want to put forward some ideas,
what we can learn from it, how we can
fight against it.
Well, first of all, it's a simple
solution. It's a technological solution.
We can use the weapons to protect against
the interconnection records.
We can prepare against hacking.
We can use encryption if possible,
and so on and so forth.
These are measures that have been that
they're long tested and
most of you, I guess, able to
to do just these things.
But I don't think that this is a long
term solution, and
I don't think it's a solution for all of
society. It works for me.
It works for us, but
it doesn't work for all of society,
because if we're honest, none of
it most of the people will not invest
hours and hours in putting up these
systems.
So what we really need to come up with is
a system that works for all, a response
that doesn't only protect us,
but puts the
discussion different on a different
playing field.
And the first thing is go to the court
some weeks ago, I think I
hope many of you have heard of it.
The ECJ rejected an A
in a great decision, a large part
of this bill, even though it
wasn't challenged directly in court,
the infamous part of the interconnection
records will most likely not stand up
to the decision of a European
Court of Justice Justice.
And there are certain
rights. We have those rights and we need
to tell it. We need to go to the courts
and defend them, either us or give
money to people who do it for us, because
these these decisions affect
all of society.
Secondly, and maybe
need to take some time to explain this
point. We are currently in a position
where many people want more security
and we have many people who have come
up with the idea that more access to data
will lead to more security.
Now, I can genuinely believe
that sometimes more extra data
would have prevented a murder or would
have prevented that sort of crime.
But once we're in this narrative, we lose
the site for other forms of increasing
our security.
And I suggest we try
to achieve a strategy once
trying to decrease this
world of increasing failed
security, because I normally feel quite
secure and maybe we
just need to make everybody else feel
more secure to end this vicious circle.
And maybe a second part, something that's
not often discussed, is maybe we
can come up with different ideas how to
stimulate this desire, how to increase
security while not sacrificing
our digital rights.
And the next point comes back to
the point of trust in a democracy.
How do we view how do we view government
intrinsically?
If I have many discussions with with
friends in London,
yes, they criticize the spill, but
they have such a trust in the government
that they won't misuse it,
that there's not really any progress in
the discussion.
So one of the major
challenges is for us to make it possible
to view the state as a
threat and to deliver an actor,
because it must be both.
And we must be able to
raise the first and say this
could be a threat and also uses
it in other scenarios.
And this is very difficult to paint, not
a good or bad picture.
And this is a very difficult challenge.
We may all need to engage in how exactly
I'm open to any
suggestions.
Um, next on list, I
think we need to make our systems more
representative.
What I said earlier about the UK system
is that some parties are overrepresented
and other opinions are underrepresented.
And I think the system's more
representative of the various easy
solutions to give critics a larger
platform.
But what it also does is give
or if we are already chipping away our
substantial rights, at least
the majority is doing it.
I think that that's something we should
all agree on, that not thirty seven
percent should be allowed to do.
It should be at least the majority.
And of course, going
back to the critics, I don't think if we
give critics a larger platform that these
kind of laws will be passed.
Um, and lastly, I think
I especially to work on my attention
because I was blinded by
the Brexit referendum, by the US
election. It really sucked my sucked
me in it.
It was a spectacle.
It was a media spectacle.
And I, like many others, lost
the sight of the things
around us for not really here, but
for very long time.
And I certainly have to
learn to diversify
my attention and also to diversify
my actions
and. This is maybe then the challenge to
also make others diversify their
attention and not be blinded by these
spectacles we see nowadays in
the international media.
That's it. I hope you've got some some
good ideas from this. Some some
suggestions and learn some interesting
lessons about this new book.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Hendrika.
This one once, once again, a situation
whereby we have to reboot the system.
You actually, the moment you came up with
the why question, I was immediately
thinking about why do dogs lick
their balls?
And the answer there is because they
can.
So you get in a situation that the system
is where they are. The No.
One actually can do anything about it
since.
Yeah, I think the incentives in the
system are laid out in a way that
it develops. And this in the situation,
it doesn't it doesn't need to.
But if we don't change the incentives,
the development is imminent.
So this is a call for action as well.
And again, you're taking action as a
journalist, I understood I'm
I'm writing as long as I find time for
for this particular talk.
I also didn't interrupt there.
I really enjoy it.
While our guys go out there to check
out these publications, we have some
questions from the audience.
I suppose, firstly,
practically tried to take this story as
exit, please, sir.
Go ahead.
Thank you.
I have two questions. First questions.
You mentioned that they
have to detained the main
that to understand in a technical way
that they have to demain the domain name
like Dienes or is it also
for IP addresses?
So if I set up my website just
on an IP address, will that be detained
or not?
I, I wish I could answer the
question. Um.
Ah, I hear yes, from
here, I know that I guess
that I know that the IP addresses are
safe. So I guess this is because.
And with it.
Yes, exactly, so if you have
everything before the last slash,
so I suppose it's just using
TDP date, don't do other
protocols like what?
I know Bitcoin or something
like that.
I I'm sorry.
I wouldn't know the answer.
That's maybe something we have to
get to know in court.
Something some of these things I said
are not challenged by the ECJ
and I wish
I could give you a better answer.
OK, and my second question is,
I would listen, your opinion about how
do you think we as outsiders as
European Union or even
maybe even far, should react?
What do you think about especially about
sanctions? Could we use sanctions to
influence UK?
Because as I see as an outsider,
I don't have any rights and they inspired
me at all. So I think that's harmful for
me. And maybe some of my
government would put
some sanction on UK.
It could influence them or whatever.
I don't think that that could
work in a positive manner,
um, because
of many, many motivations.
And one of them is that.
Instead of having
a positive effect, I would rather see a
retaliatory effect of the of
these sanctions.
I don't think that the British
government, just because they have these
measures and a majority of things that
they're good.
The problem isn't that only the
elite thinks that this is a good measure,
but we have certain polls from Jagoff
saying that a majority of people actually
supported the bill.
It doesn't mean they support
they know what's in it.
But when I think it's
more important to change the public
opinion instead of just putting pressure
on the state system.
Well, but wouldn't that have some
pedagogic influences
of the people, too?
And also, I mean.
Well, let's think we making easily
something to Russia.
And I think they are
yet
to tell. I mean, I think that should be,
at least for outsiders,
some soft sanctions.
I mean, they don't have to make the bad
things. But how about the tax
surveillance tax? Because, I mean,
for all their security
or let's think of Amazon UK
company and why not putting some little
money on top of that?
Because I don't know whether there
is some
sense, but in which were
wire tapping my mobile phone because I
have an I'm Processo.
So I think as outsiders, we
should also be
active in this way.
And also, of course, in our own
CÃ©lestin, you just get to the question.
And otherwise, you know, the second
one was just kind of an idea
suggestions.
But thank you. You know, we have one
question from out of space.
I noticed.
Yeah.
Uh, the first question was, are the
foreign services or companies
widely used by UK citizens
and not conforming with the UK laws?
Uh, are they blocked?
Um, like the first there are some
special regulations on foreign
businesses, for example, on, um,
it's not possible to issue public
warrants to foreign businesses, only a
case by case issues as possible.
Um, and that
there is some talk of of
definitely fines and other measures that
government is able to take if these
companies are not obliged to the to the
government if they are given a notice.
It was not a question.
Yeah, from space, I mean, uh,
yeah, the next question was, uh, similar
law just got passed parliament
in the Netherlands and it's due to be
treated in the Senate.
What advice do you have on exposing
the lies governments use to get these
types of laws passed?
Um, everything before to slash
or after the slap, that's the answer, I
think. Let's take the other question that
may I think it was, you know, we can
discuss this for hours.
A question, a direct one.
We don't have that much time.
OK, it is a direct question.
You talked about more and more
representative system that would help
to impeach such impede with such
laws.
But I have a slight fear
that also more representation could also
be used as a tool for populists, because
as we know, the prime
minister that we all know are not that
much in favor of was elected
democratically.
So what kind of more representation
do you mean and how would you
try to.
Find a way that populist's couldn't use
this tool, um.
Well, first, I was
not trying to use the word making it more
democratic because it very much depends
on how you define your democracy
and what representative I meant,
making it more representative of national
opinions, of the national
distribution of opinions.
So right now, though, you can make
you can make like an arrow index of
what was the how many votes at that party
get, how many percentage votes
and how many seats, how many percentage
of seats that get in parliament.
And in the UK, this measure
is a 44, 44 percent error.
So 44 percent of of the seats are
somewhat somewhat not in accordance
with a public vote and.
That means parties are not that didn't
get into parliament or that got there
and have no more percentages as as votes,
and if you add up all the differences,
you can add to talk to really high
number.
Um, I think
we if
the public is on our side on
defending our rights and I think
this is something we need all to
to engage in and make it possible, this
is this is the case.
We shouldn't fear populist because
then it's the majority opinion.
But more importantly, I think
if we have or if
parliament can be a platform for parties
that challenge these things on a
constructive level, we can
magnify the impact of the criticism.
To a larger extent than just populist
reframing the security narrative.
I have a question here, please, sir.
Thank you.
You mentioned that one
of the things we should work with
is making sure that people
actually understand the privacy impact of
the charter.
So would you agree that privacy has
gotten out of fashion? And what do you
suggest we do about it?
I wouldn't say that privacy is cut out of
fashion, but rather people
view it differently.
So I think most people have
the same idea of privacy.
If we think of an analog world,
the same sense of privacy they had 50
years ago, when they're in the house and
they don't want someone looking through
their windows.
I think the change is much more to
to translate this
this sense of privacy to
a world where there isn't this this
idea of, OK, I can see someone looking
through my window.
I don't think as much that they're
the world to have a private sphere
has changed, but rather that the
idea of what my private sphere is
has changed.
And the only thing that Hobbs's and
educating about the technologies we use
and making people aware of,
of the impact of that technologies.
Good thing we have time for more
questions, I think.
Yes, please.
Hello. So given
the prevailing political atmosphere in
the United Kingdom, Brexit means Brexit,
red, white and blue, Brexit, all of this
nonsense.
What do you think are the realistic
chances of Theresa May taking the
slightest notice of the recent ECJ
decision?
And depending on your answer, what does
this tell us both about the
campaign, such as it was against the IPI
bill and what we do about it now?
One of the theories is definitely that
the government will say, well, we don't
want the ECJ interfering with us.
We don't want
no, there was a decision by the TGA, but
because of what, a Brexit, we reinforce
our right to make our own laws
and give it a 50/50 chance, depending
on how fast Brexit is.
You're much more of an optimist than I
am.
I'm sorry. I have to wrap
up this.
Thank you, Hendrik, for your fantastic
speech here.