Sources · Mass surveillance
This house believes mass surveillance is a price worth paying for security.
Fact bank v1 · 12 cards
- SRV-01Mostly true
“Bulk surveillance powers have helped British spy agencies stop terror attacks.”
An independent review in 2016 backed this up. It found that collecting internet traffic in bulk had been very useful to GCHQ. It played an important part in stopping bomb attacks, rescuing a hostage and blocking many cyber-attacks.
The reviewer, David Anderson QC, studied about 60 examples given by MI5, MI6 and GCHQ and questioned about 85 officials. The examples came from the agencies themselves, though his team checked them against the intelligence reports written at the time. He reported that almost half of GCHQ's intelligence reports were based on data collected under bulk warrants. He also warned that more and more encryption may slowly be making bulk collection of internet traffic less useful, except for defending against cyber-attacks. He was not asked whether the powers are worth the loss of privacy. That was left to Parliament.
“The bulk interception power has proven itself to be of vital utility across the range of GCHQ's operational areas”
GOV.UK (Home Office)·Report of the Bulk Powers Review (Cm 9326), by David Anderson QC, Independent Reviewer of Terrorism LegislationGovernment / parliament · 19 Aug 2016 ↗Further sources for this card
- SRV-02Mostly true
“America's mass collection of phone records never stopped a single terrorist attack.”
Mostly right. In 2014 a US government privacy watchdog found no case where the NSA's phone records program made a real difference to how a terrorism investigation turned out. It knew of no plot the program had uncovered and no attack it had stopped.
The watchdog, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, looked at secret briefings and papers. It found that in seven years the program had arguably helped identify only one unknown terrorism suspect, and that person was not planning an attack. The NSA's bulk collection of phone records later stopped, though phone companies still kept records the NSA could ask for. A 2016 UK review said this US finding cannot simply be applied to Britain's powers, which are used in different ways.
“we have not identified a single instance involving a threat to the United States in which the program made a concrete difference”
GOV.UK (Home Office)·Report of the Bulk Powers Review (Cm 9326), quoting the US Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board's January 2014 report on the Section 215 telephone records programGovernment / parliament · 19 Aug 2016 ↗ - SRV-03True
“America's Section 702 internet surveillance program has helped uncover terror plots.”
Confirmed: the US privacy watchdog (the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board) found that Section 702 helped uncover terror plots that were not known before, so they could be disrupted.
Under Section 702, the NSA collects the emails and calls of chosen foreign people outside the US, with forced help from phone and internet companies. The board saw this as targeted rather than bulk collection, though a UK review found it works much like Britain's bulk interception. The board noted it can target people who are not involved in terrorism at all, and privacy campaigners criticised its 2014 report.
“enabled the discovery of previously unknown terrorist plots directed against the United States and foreign countries, enabling the disruption of those plots”
GOV.UK (Home Office)·Report of the Bulk Powers Review (Cm 9326), quoting the US Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board's July 2014 report on Section 702Government / parliament · 19 Aug 2016 ↗ - SRV-04Mostly false
“Collecting phone records is harmless, because they only show numbers and times, not what people said.”
A Stanford study in the journal PNAS found that phone records on their own are closely linked together, can easily be traced back to real people, and can reveal sensitive things about them.
The researchers used phone records shared by 823 volunteers through a phone app. They found the records could also show where people were and who they were close to. It is true that these records do not include what was said. But laws in the US and other countries often protect these records much less than the calls themselves, which is why the study matters in this debate.
“we demonstrate that telephone metadata is densely interconnected, can trivially be reidentified, and can be used to draw sensitive inferences”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (abstract via PubMed, US National Library of Medicine)·Evaluating the privacy properties of telephone metadata (Mayer, Mutchler and Mitchell, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113(20))Government / parliament · 17 May 2016 ↗ - SRV-05Mostly false
“GCHQ reads everyone's emails and messages.”
GCHQ can tap only a tiny fraction of the world's internet links. Its computers automatically throw away much of what passes through, and analysts never look at the vast majority of the items collected.
To find wanted messages, GCHQ's computers briefly hold a copy of everything on the links it taps and scan it for things like target phone numbers or email addresses. Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee said in 2015 that only the messages of suspected criminals or national security targets are deliberately picked out to be examined. People still disagree about whether scanning everything on a link by computer counts as mass surveillance.
“This triage process means that the vast majority of all the items collected are never looked at by analysts.”
GOV.UK (Home Office)·Report of the Bulk Powers Review (Cm 9326), by David Anderson QC, Independent Reviewer of Terrorism LegislationGovernment / parliament · 19 Aug 2016 ↗ - SRV-06Mixed
“CCTV cameras cut crime.”
It depends where. A review of the best studies, published by the Home Office, found CCTV cut crime by only about 4% overall. It cut crime in car parks by about 41%, but had little or no effect in city centres and on public transport.
The review also found CCTV had no effect on violent crime. In the car parks, other measures such as better lighting were used at the same time, so not all of the drop may be down to cameras. A 2005 Home Office study of 13 camera systems found only two showed a clear drop in crime compared with similar areas. Both studies are around 20 years old.
“Overall, the best current evidence suggests that CCTV reduces crime to a small degree.”
Home Office (UK Government Web Archive)·Crime prevention effects of closed circuit television: a systematic review (Home Office Research Study 252, Welsh and Farrington)Government / parliament · 1 Aug 2002 ↗ - SRV-07Mixed
“The attackers behind Britain's 2017 terror attacks were already known to MI5.”
Half of them were. Of the six attackers in the four attacks in London and Manchester, three were on MI5's radar. One was under active investigation, and two had been looked at before but their cases had been closed.
The other three had never been investigated by MI5. At the time MI5 was actively looking at about 3,000 people (its 'subjects of interest'), and had closed the cases of about 20,000 more. An independent review said the Manchester attack might have been stopped if things had gone differently. MI5 and the police made 126 recommendations, including making better use of data. They had also stopped 20 Islamist terror plots in the previous four years.
“Three of the six attackers were on MI5's radar”
GOV.UK (Home Office)·Attacks in London and Manchester, March-June 2017: Independent Assessment of MI5 and Police Internal Reviews (David Anderson QC)Government / parliament · 5 Dec 2017 ↗ - SRV-08Mostly true
“Phone and internet records are used in almost every serious crime case.”
The Home Office says records of who contacted whom, when and where (but not what was said) are used in 95% of serious and organised crime prosecutions handled by the Crown Prosecution Service's organised crime team, and in every major MI5 counter-terrorism investigation over the last decade.
This is the government's own figure, from 2016, and it covers only that one team's cases. Phone and internet companies can be made to keep certain types of these records for up to 12 months. Police and other public bodies can then ask for the records they need, when it is needed and fair to do so.
“It is used in 95% of serious and organised crime prosecution cases handled by the Crown Prosecution Service Organised Crime Division”
GOV.UK (Home Office)·Operational Case for the Retention of Internet Connection Records (Investigatory Powers Bill)Government / parliament · 1 Mar 2016 ↗ - SRV-09Mostly false
“The Snooper's Charter makes internet companies keep your full browsing history for a year.”
Not quite. Under the Investigatory Powers Act, companies can be ordered to keep 'internet connection records' for up to 12 months. These show which sites or apps a device connected to, like Google or BBC News, but not what was searched for or which articles were read.
The government says these records are not a full browsing history. By 2023 the National Crime Agency was still only trialling them with a small number of companies before any wider use. Local councils cannot get them, and for crime investigations the crime must be serious enough.
“a record of a website visited, such as Google, but not the information that was searched for”
GOV.UK (Home Office)·Report on the Operation of the Investigatory Powers Act 2016Government / parliament · 9 Feb 2023 ↗ - SRV-10Mostly true
“Mass surveillance makes people change what they say and do online.”
Some people, yes. In a 2014-15 Pew survey, 34% of Americans who had heard about government surveillance programs said they had changed at least one habit to hide information from the government, such as changing social media privacy settings (17%) or avoiding certain words online (13%).
Most people who had heard about the programs said they had not changed how they communicate or what they do online. Overall, 22% of all adults said they had changed how they use technology since the Snowden leaks. Most changes were simple, like using harder passwords (25% of those who had heard). The survey was small, with 475 adults, and relies on what people said about themselves.
“34% of those who have heard about the programs say that they have changed at least one of the following”
Pew Research Center·Americans' Privacy Strategies Post-Snowden: How People Are Changing Their Own BehaviorIndependent research institute · 16 Mar 2015 ↗ - SRV-11Mixed
“Most people are happy to give up some privacy for surveillance that keeps them safe.”
It depends on who is being watched. In a 2014-15 Pew survey, 82% of Americans said it was acceptable to monitor suspected terrorists, but only 40% said the same about ordinary citizens. In June 2013, 56% called the NSA's tracking of phone records acceptable, but by January 2014, 53% disapproved of the government collecting phone and internet data.
In 2013, 62% also said investigating terror threats mattered more than privacy. Worry has grown since: in 2023, 71% of Americans said they were worried about how the government uses people's data, up from 64% in 2019. These are all US surveys, and the questions were worded differently each time.
“only a minority of Americans — 40% — feel it is acceptable to monitor ordinary American citizens”
Pew Research Center·Americans' Privacy Strategies Post-Snowden: Americans' Views on Government Surveillance ProgramsIndependent research institute · 16 Mar 2015 ↗Further sources for this card
- Pew Research Center · Majority Views NSA Phone Tracking as Acceptable Anti-terror Tactic (survey of 1,004 adults, 6-9 June 2013) ↗
- Pew Research Center · Obama's NSA Speech Has Little Impact on Skeptical Public (survey of 1,504 adults, 15-19 January 2014) ↗
- Pew Research Center · How Americans View Data Privacy (survey of 5,101 adults, 15-21 May 2023) ↗
- SRV-12Mostly true
“Courts have ruled that the UK's mass surveillance rules broke the law.”
Mostly right, though the courts found fault with parts of the rules rather than banning surveillance. In May 2021 the European Court of Human Rights found that Britain's old system for bulk interception broke the rights to privacy and free speech, because there was no independent approval beforehand. The European Court of Justice (the EU's top court) also struck down the EU's 2006 Data Retention Directive, a law on keeping records of people's calls and internet use. And in 2018 the High Court ruled it was unlawful that police and other public bodies could get such records for serious crime cases without independent approval.
The 2021 ruling was about the older law. The government says the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 mostly fixed those problems, but that extra protections for journalists were still needed. After the EU ruling, Britain passed an emergency law in July 2014, later replaced by the 2016 Act. After the 2018 ruling, the government changed the law and set up an independent office to approve requests. A 2022 High Court ruling means spy agencies also need independent approval for some requests about serious crime. In these cases the powers stayed, but with extra checks.
“in response to the European Court of Justice striking down the Data Retention Directive of 2006”
GOV.UK (Home Office)·Report on the Operation of the Investigatory Powers Act 2016Government / parliament · 9 Feb 2023 ↗
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