An Emerging Pattern

Lame Excuses to Expand State Control Over the Internet

by Pater Tenebrarum

Slowly but surely, a pattern is emerging. We always wondered why the Snowden revelations were 'allowed' to get out, and why the mainstream media, which previously had not breathed a word about what people like William Binneyhad to say (whose whistle-blowing preceded Edward Snowden's by a good while), suddenly started to make so much noise. The pattern that is lately emerging is that governments are using these revelations to try to extend their control over the internet – see for example the plans recently announced by Brazil.

While previous attempts to corral the internet via copyright legislation failed, the outcry over NSA spying has opened new avenues to extend state control, and these plans naturally enjoy broad support – after all, nobody wants to be spied on by US spooks. The reason why one must be highly suspicious of all these proposals that purport to 'protect' the population from spying is that we know for a fact that Western governments are in reality not worried in the least about NSA spying. This is because all of them are doing it.  Mr. Hollande's faux moral outrage (which forms the basis of his insane proposal to tax EU data transfers) should deceive precisely no-one. As we pointed out in early July:

[...] the French government is spying on its citizens wholesale as well – in what has been described as a 'huge operation'.”

In the same article we also wrote about the close cooperation of German and US secret services, and as der Spiegel just reported, even Mrs. Merkel's outrage over the NSA listening in to one of her cell phones is largely play-acting:

“One particular point of clarification was especially important to Angela Merkel during the EU summit in Brussels last week. When she complained about the NSA's alleged tapping of her cellphone, the German chancellor made clear that her concern was not for herself, but for the "telephones of millions of EU citizens," whose privacy she said was compromised by US spying.

Yet at a working dinner with fellow EU heads of state on Thursday, where the agenda included a proposed law to bolster data protection, Merkel's fighting spirit on behalf of the EU's citizens seemed to have dissipated.

In fact, internal documents show that Germany applied the brakes when it came to speedy passage of such a reform. Although a number of EU member states — including France, Italy and Poland — were pushing for the creation of a Europe-wide modern data protection framework before European Parliament elections take place in May 2014, the issue ended up tabled until 2015. Great Britain, itself suspected of spying on its EU partners, and Prime Minister David Cameron, who has former Google CEO Eric Schmidt as one of his advisors, put up considerable resistance. He pushed instead for the final summit statement to call simply for "rapid" progress on a solid EU data-protection framework.

Merkel also joined those applying the brakes. Over the weekend, SPIEGEL ONLINE gained access to internal German Foreign Ministry documents concerning the EU leaders' final summit statement. The "track changes" feature reflects a crucial proposed change to item No. 8 under the subject heading "Digital Economy" – the suggestion that the phrase "adoption next year" be replaced with "The negotiations have to be carried on intensely."

Ultimately, the official version of the final summit statement simply called for "rapid" progress on the issue — just as Great Britain was hoping for.” 

(emphasis added) 

Regulatory Arbitrage

In order to understand what is going on here, remember that these people are all statists and therefore represent statist interests. There is good reason to suspect that secret services in the continental EU can bypass legal limitations they are subject to with the NSA's and the UK GCHQ's help. This is to say, they can probably get any data they want (but cannot obtain themselves on legal grounds) from their colleagues overseas. Of course we cannot prove this contention, but consider e.g. in this context what the Guardian reported regarding the NSA-GCHQ collaboration:

“Privacy campaigners have accused Britain's spy agencies of "selling their services to a foreign power" following revelations that the US government had paid at least £100m to GCHQ.

The top secret payments were set out in documents leaked to the Guardian by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden, who on Thursday was granted temporary asylum in Russia. They suggest that the National Security Agency (NSA) has substantially funded GCHQ over the last three years to secure access to, and influence over, Britain's intelligence-gathering programs.

The documents also show that the Americans expect a return on their investment, and that GCHQ is acutely conscious of the need to meet US demands. Ministers have denied that GCHQ does the NSA's "dirty work" and have pointed to the US and UK's longstanding intelligence-sharing relationship.

But in the documents GCHQ describes Britain's surveillance laws and regulatory regime as a "selling point" for Washington. On Friday, Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said: "Once upon a time the rule of law was as great a British export as Beckham's right foot. Now it seems our most powerful security agency capitalises on weak legal privacy protections to sell its services to a foreign power."

She added: "Just as politicians whip up xenophobia and threaten international human rights law, securocrats replace national and parliamentary sovereignty with secret pacts to monitor the globe." 

(emphasis added)

The important point is precisely the 'regulatory arbitrage' between these agencies we highlighted above: in this case it was the GCHQ that sold its services to the NSA on the grounds that it can essentially do whatever it likes due to to the UK's convenient absence of privacy protections. It is probably fair to assume that similar horsetrading is taking place between more than just these two agencies. The surveillance state is not just a US specialty. It has gone global long ago.

Two things need to be considered in this context: for one thing, the statist elites hate the fact that they have comparatively little control over the internet and the free exchange of information it enables.

For another, the giant data collection effort serves no discernible legitimate purpose. It sure is no help in 'catching terrorists'. For instance, it has been reported that 'the NSA monitored 60 million phone calls in Spain in just one month'. This is simply a giant, utterly useless flood of data (see also the comments by one of Mish's readers on thistopic). We strongly suspect that the complaints by Spain's government over these revelations are essentially play-acting for the domestic audience as well. In reality, nothing will change.

Consider however the following: everybody now knows that every conversation is recorded and spied on – which is an excellent way of keeping the population in fear and docile. In addition, the road is paved for erecting an 'instant tyranny' as soon as a big enough 'emergency' appears on the scene.

Admittedly this is a bit of a conspiratorial view – but then again, history is a chain of events that at first looked innocuous, only to be later revealed as quite nefarious. There are not many 'coincidences' in political practice.