Schneier on Security

It’s not just where technology is involved that the general principle of third-party confidentiality is being erroded, removed or worse turned into compulsion.

Under English law various communications were considered priveledged this included but was not limited to,

1, Spouses.
2, Priests.
3, Lawyers.
4, Those acting in a medical capacity
5, Qualified Accountants.
6, Journalists.

Usually the change was occasioned by some event or class of event but was subsiquently argued into something broader.

Take spouses at one time wives were not allowed to give testimony against their husbands, neither the Police or members of the judiciary were even allowed to ask questions and even if told they had to legaly disregard it.

However it was used by some as a method of being held unacountable for abuse, rape and even murder. Because of the serious nature of these crimes changes were made to alow spouses to testify against each other. Few if anybody would regard these changes as unreasonable on the face of it and as usuall the “think of the children” emotive arguments were used to silence nay sayers.

However some nay sayers pointed out quite correctly that this legal dam once breached would go from a trickle to a flood which would cause very real and dangerous harm. And this is what has happened, it’s now reached the point in the UK where spouses are being not just threatend with prosecution for witholding evidence but actually being committed to jail by judges.

Even the legal proffession is being “got at” in that what is covered by client-attorny privealedge is being weakend. Other proffessions are likewise being told not just “no priveledge” but to report “any suspicions”, thus accountants, architects, bank clerks are required to report any suspicion of “money laudering” or “tax evasion”. So for instance where there is a transaction limit where they are required to report the transaction (aprox 10,000USD equivalent) if you say take out a small amount of cash (say 200USD equivalent) from the bank and tell the cashier it’s “to pay for car repairs” then as far as the law is concerned the cashier now has reasonable suspicion and should report it to the government. So worried are some proffesions they report not just transactions but enquires as well in order to protect themselves.

Worse perhaps is that “business records” can be siezed with less and less protection. In the past individuals details were not considered part of a business transaction record, and had a semi protected status in that lawfull authority had to be obtained by presenting argument and evidence to a circuit judge, who would be able to assess if there was valid reason to sieze the records.

However as I know this has been weakened for the likes of OfCom who can drag a magistrate in without the presence of a court clerk present false information and preasure the magistrate into signing the warrent. But further OfComs “agent” (Clive Corrie of OfCom’s Birmingham office in this case) exceeds their lawfull authority to sieze all records knowing full well that he has absolutly no entitlement to them. Further he then without lawfull authority releases these illegaly obtained records to whom so ever he choses for the purpose of “creating trouble” as a revenge tactic.

But it gets worse further the UK Government dispite legislation otherwise belive it’s OK to “sell all medical records” with little or no anonymisation. The official blurb talks about “research” and making the UK a world leader, however the facts are they will be sold to US and other companies and taken outside of UK and EU data protection zones and in all likely hood get sliced and diced and cross compiled with other escaped data from the financial and marketing worlds and re-packaged and sold on at a premium. However just to make it abundantly clear the original legislation to enable this made it very clear there are “first class” and “second class” citizens. Those in selected positions and their familes will be exempt, the rest of us not. Some UK patients had the forsight to write to their Dr’s forbiding them putting their records onto Government systems (see UK “NHS Spine” disaster that BT amongst the other “usual suspects”, was involved with, it was once billed as “The worlds most expensive IT disaster”). So the Government under “lobbying Preasure” from US Healthcare companies responded by making Drs income involve the adding of patient records in a disproportianate way. Thus objecting patients became a financial liability to a Drs income and some found themselves without a General Practicioner fairly promptly. These people now have at best very limited access to health care and the current UK Gov is running around trying to make the situation far far worse, in that those attending Accident and Emergancy Departments at hospitals are being in effect refused access unless triage staff deam that what the patient presents with is a genuine emergancy, with the first step of the process being providing your GP Details…

But this gets worse the UK Government are forcing everybody to contact them “electronicaly” which basicaly means shody call center staff or EMail via insecure methods. This in turn means you are commpeled to have contact with a telecoms company, who are required to collect and store all metadata.

And this brings me onto “Smith vs. Maryland” back prior to 1979 the bulk of important communications was still via the postal service. Partly this was to do with the relative cost with postage being less expensive than a two minute phone call, thus the compulsion then was to postal communications that were more difficult to “tap into” and due to the effort involved carefull thought went into the composition of corespondance.

It was back then when many US citizens still did not have electronic communications in their homes or access to them at work still just possible if you were “fuddy duddy” enough to view personal electronic communications as a luxury that was neither an enabler or requirment for partisipation in society and thus a “life style choice” not a “necessity”.

This is nologer true you are not just compelled to use electronic communications in general it’s reached the point where it’s not possible to get employment or access many services needed to participate in society without it, it’s now almost as essential as access to water. It’s ubiquity is such that even socialy it’s a requirment from a very early age, and with it the “familiarity that breeds contempt” and more importantly informality and lack of carefully considered thought. This is excacerbated by the general view that unlike written communications electronic communications are some how ephemeral or easily disposed off.

For those with their ears and eyes open then and now the Olly North court case should have been a clarion wake up call. Most people who were adults and living in First world / Western nations had it trotted out to them via newspaper, television and radio, not just in the daily news slots but also in editorials and talk shows (this was no doubt helped by Fawn Hall who was a journalists dream witness).

It was repeated over and over again that the “smoking gun” evidence was from emails that had been copied countless times onto backup tapes. Not just at the mail servers at either end but at quite a few points in between. The lesson then was switched from “you can communicate privately” to “you have no control on plaintext or communications meta data”, the lesson now is “everything you do generates meta data and it’s all colllected without your consent or control and most certainly not for your benifit, and you will not be alowed to opt-out”.

Judges and legislators should “wake up and smell the coffee” and at the very least recognise this change in society’s reality.