A mere five weeks into the new year, the 2015 state
actor has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to sacrifice privacy in the
name of security.
On January 12, British Prime Minister David Cameron insisted that government surveillance of online communications is
necessary to keep its citizenry safe in an era of increased terrorist threats:
“But the question remains are we going to allow a means of communication where
it simply isn’t possible to [access a message’s content]? And my answer to that
question is no we must not. The first duty of any government is to keep our
country and our people safe. The attacks in Paris once again demonstrated the
scale of the terrorist threat that we face and the need to have robust powers
through our intelligence and security agencies and policing in order to keep
our people safe.”
The following day, in a speech to the National Assembly, French Prime Minister M. Manuel Valls
similarly declared, “The fight against terrorism requires vigilance at all
times. We must be able to continuously monitor all convicted terrorists, know
where they live and monitor their presence or absence.” A week later, Valls announced the creation of 2,500 counterterrorist jobs as well as a
forthcoming bill to reevaluate the legal structures surrounding French
surveillance and intelligence operations.
In both cases, responses have come from a variety of
sectors, but the message has been singular: there is no greater threat to
security than that of compromised privacy. Cybersecurity expert Graham Cluley knows that there is simply no way to give government access to
communication without also leaving it vulnerable to hackers; he countered
Cameron’s proposal by acknowledging that “regular consumers and businesses will
be put at risk if secure messaging systems are backdoored.” From a national
security perspective, former French Prime Minister Francois Fillon warned, "This must not lead to the renouncing of fundamental
freedoms, otherwise we prove right those who come to fight on our soil.”
If their critics’ warnings are not enough to stop
Cameron and Valls from following through on current proposals, perhaps the
international community’s response to China’s new cybersecurity policies should
be. In late 2014, under the stated aim of strengthening cybersecurity, the
Chinese government developed regulations that called for foreign companies
selling technology to Chinese banks to share source code and build accessible
‘backdoors’ into the technology.
On January 28, rather than comply or abandon the
Chinese market, 18 United States business lobbies submitted a formal letter urging China to postpone implementation of the regulations in order
to allow for dialogue with all involved stakeholders. As the letter recognized,
“Our concern is not with the goal of enhancing security, but the means to reach
it. An overly broad, opaque,
discriminatory approach to cybersecurity policy that restricts global internet and
ICT products and services would ultimately isolate Chinese ICT firms from the
global marketplace and weaken cybersecurity, thereby harming China’s economic
growth and development and restricting customer choice.” Much like Cameron and
Valls, Chinese President Xi Jinping wrongly equated compromised privacy (and
isolation) with increased security.
The nature
of cybersecurity requires that countries see themselves as members of a
composite rather than as individual actors. As such, no one government can be
entrusted with secure information. China tried to position itself as an
omnipotent, unilateral actor and now finds the world saying no. Let David
Cameron and Manuel Valls take note that in the current climate of
cybersecurity, one country cannot guarantee its security by infringing upon the
privacy of its citizenry and one man cannot succeed if the rest of the world
has stopped listening.
No comments:
Post a Comment