{"id":55539,"date":"2015-03-16T12:00:37","date_gmt":"2015-03-16T12:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=55539"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:25:57","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:25:57","slug":"the-orwellian-re-branding-of-mass-surveillance-as-merely-bulk-collection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/03\/the-orwellian-re-branding-of-mass-surveillance-as-merely-bulk-collection\/","title":{"rendered":"The Orwellian Re-Branding of \u201cMass Surveillance\u201d as Merely \u201cBulk Collection\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo:<\/a>

Photo: Press Association\/AP<\/p><\/div>\n

13 Mar 2015 – <\/em>Just as the Bush administration and the U.S. media<\/a> re-labelled \u201ctorture\u201d\u00a0with the Orwellian euphemism\u00a0\u201cenhanced interrogation techniques\u201d to make it more palatable, the\u00a0governments and media of the Five Eyes surveillance alliance are now attempting to re-brand \u201cmass surveillance\u201d as \u201cbulk collection\u201d in order to make it less menacing (and less illegal). In the past several weeks, this is the clearly coordinated theme that has arisen in the\u00a0U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand as the last defense against the Snowden revelations, as those governments\u00a0seek\u00a0to further enhance<\/a> their surveillance and detention powers<\/a> under the guise of terrorism<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This manipulative language distortion can be seen perfectly in\u00a0yesterday\u2019s white-washing report of GCHQ mass surveillance from the servile rubber-stamp<\/a>\u00a0calling itself \u201cThe Intelligence and Security Committee of the UK Parliament (ISC)\u201d(see this great Guardian<\/em>\u00a0editorial<\/a>\u00a0this morning on what a \u201cslumbering\u201d joke that \u201coversight\u201d body is). As Committee Member MP Hazel Blears explained yesterday (photo above), the Parliamentary Committee officially invoked this euphemism\u00a0to justify the collection of\u00a0billions<\/em>\u00a0of electronic communications events every day.<\/p>\n

The Committee\u00a0actually acknowledged for the first time (which Snowden documents long ago proved) that GCHQ maintains what it calls \u201cBulk Personal Datasets\u201d that contain \u201cmillions of records,\u201d and even said about pro-privacy\u00a0witnesses who testified before it: \u201cwe recognise their concerns as to the intrusive nature of bulk collection.\u201d That<\/em> is the very definition of \u201cmass surveillance,\u201d<\/a> yet the Committee simply\u00a0re-labelled it \u201cbulk collection,\u201d purported to\u00a0distinguish it from\u00a0\u201cmass surveillance,\u201d and thus insist that it was all perfectly legal.<\/p>\n

\"gchq<\/a><\/p>\n

This re-definition game goes as follows: yes, we vacuum\u00a0up and store literally as much of the internet as we possibly can. Then we analyze all the data about what you\u2019re doing, with whom you\u2019re speaking, and who your network of associates is.<\/strong>\u00a0Based on that analysis of all of you and your activities, we then read the communications that we want (with virtually no checks and concealing from you what percentage of it we\u2019re reading), and store as much of the rest of it\u00a0as technology permits for future trolling. But don\u2019t worry: we\u2019re only reading the Bad People\u2019s emails. So run along then: no mass surveillance here. Just bulk collection!\u00a0It\u2019s not mass surveillance, but \u201cenhanced collection techniques.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

One of the many facts that made the re-defining of \u201ctorture\u201d so corrupt and indisputably invalid was that there was long-standing law<\/a> making clear that exactly these interrogation techniques used by the U.S. government were torture and thus illegal<\/a>. The same is true of this obscene attempt to re-define \u201cmass surveillance\u201d as nothing more than mere innocent \u201cbulk collection.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Caspar Bowden points out<\/a>, EU law is crystal clear that exactly what these agencies are doing constitutes illegal mass surveillance. From the 2000 decision<\/a> of the European Court of Human Rights in Amann v. Switzerland<\/em>,\u00a0<\/em>which found a violation of the right to privacy guaranteed by Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights<\/a>\u00a0and rejected the defense\u00a0from the government that no privacy violation occurs if the data is not reviewed or exploited:<\/p>\n

The Court reiterates that the storing of data relating to the \u201cprivate life\u201d of an individual falls within the application of Article 8 \u00a7 1 \u00a0. . . .\u00a0The Court reiterates that the storing by a public authority of information relating to an individual\u2019s private life amounts to an interference within the meaning of Article 8. The subsequent use of the stored information has no bearing on that finding (emphasis added).<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

A separate 2000 ruling<\/a> found a violation of privacy rights even when the government is merely storing records regarding\u00a0one\u2019s activities undertaken in public (such as attending demonstrations), because \u201cpublic information can fall within the scope of private life where it is systematically collected and stored in files held by the authorities<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why an EU Parliamentary Inquiry into the Snowden revelations condemned<\/a>\u00a0NSA and GCHQ spying in the \u201cstrongest possible terms,\u201d pointing out that it was classic \u201cmass surveillance\u201d and thus illegal. That\u2019s the same rationale that led a U.S. federal court to conclude<\/a> that mass metatdata collection was very likely an unconstitutional violation of the privacy rights in the Fourth Amendment.<\/p>\n

By itself, common sense should prevent any of these governments from claiming that sweeping up, storing\u00a0and analyzing<\/strong>\u00a0much of the Internet \u2014 literally examining billions of communications activities every week of entire populations \u2014 is something other than \u201cmass surveillance.\u201d Yet this has now become the coordinated defense from the governments in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, New Zealand\u00a0and\u00a0Australia. It\u2019s nothing short of astonishing to watch them try to get away with this kind of propagnadistic sophistry.\u00a0(In the wake of our reports<\/a> with journalist Nicky Hager on GCSB, watch the leader of New Zealand\u2019s Green Party interrogate\u00a0the country\u2019s flailing Prime Minister<\/a>\u00a0this week in Parliament about this completely artificial distinction.)<\/p>\n

But \u2014 just as it was stunning to watch media outlets refuse<\/a> to use the term \u201ctorture\u201d because the U.S. government demanded that it be called something else \u2014 this Orwellian switch in surveillance language is now predictably (and mindlessly) being adopted by those nations\u2019 most state-loyal media outlets.<\/p>\n

Last night, I was on the BBC program\u00a0Newsnight<\/em> to discuss the new report. As usual, they decided to interview me first, and then interview a security services official after me, so that I could not respond to what the official\u00a0said. In this case, the interviewee after me was former GCHQ director David Omand\u00a0(last seen refusing to answer a difficult question about surveillance<\/a> from the U.K.\u2019s often-excellent Channel 4 by literally walking away from\u00a0the interview, insisting he had to catch a train).<\/p>\n

The somewhat contentious BBC interview from last night is worth watching, in part because Omand literally demands that there be no more surveillance disclosures or debate<\/em> because The Committee Has Spoken (also a clearly coordinated message<\/a>). But it\u2019s worthwhile even more so because\u00a0this interview illustrates the \u201cbulk collection\u201d language fraud that is now being perpetrated with the eager help of the largest media outlets in these countries:<\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=1wWYa6KvuLs<\/p>\n

______________________________<\/p>\n

Email the author: glenn.greenwald@theintercept.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 firstlook.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just as Bush administration and U.S. media re-labelled \u201ctorture\u201d with the Orwellian euphemism \u201cenhanced interrogation techniques\u201d to make it more palatable, the governments and media of the Five Eyes surveillance alliance are now re-branding \u201cmass surveillance\u201d as \u201cbulk collection\u201d in order to make it less menacing (and less illegal).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whistleblowing-surveillance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55539\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}