It’s not common to think that “ethics” and “spying” belong in the same sentence unless it also contains “devoid” or “lacking,” but there really is such a thing as ethics in spying.
The first revelation from the Snowden documents, less than two years ago, exposed systematic storage and analysis of all Americans’ telephone records by the National Security Agency and the FBI. As of midnight last night, that programme – launched in secrecy soon after 9/11 by the then vice-president, Dick Cheney – is over. Congress refused to sanction the continuation of domestic mass surveillance in the guise of collecting “business records”. The clear mood was that substantial restrictions on NSA surveillance had become inevitable.
Outside the US, some proponents of surveillance have travelled in the opposite direction. France passed an intrusive new internet surveillance law less than a month ago. Australia has done the same. Emboldened by the election victory and no longer restrained by principled Lib Dem concerns, Theresa May now pledges to force her souped-up investigatory powers bill on the UK.
But despite the machismo of political discourse, and what intelligence chiefs have publicly professed about “capability gaps”, it appears that in private many lessons from Snowden have been understood.
Two weeks ago at Ditchley Park, a thinktank and conference centre near Oxford, a remarkable follow-up to the revelations took place when Sir John Scarlett, the former chief of SIS – the Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6 – presided as 40-plus participants from around the world spent three days intensively reviewing changed approaches to intelligence, security and privacy. [Read more: Campbell/TheGuardian/
The article continues, providing some interesting insights into how both government and private enterprise–in some instances–seek to regain a handle on privacy, and also acknowledging what ought to be obvious: government agencies cannot be trusted to behave without careful oversight.
But the quote above also notes that some governments are taking advantage of the perceived new “anything goes” atmosphere to tighten things still further, even while US domestic mass surveillance is being curtailed (or so we hope).
It is truly remarkable what Snowden’s act has accomplished for digital freedoms, and will likely accomplish in the future. I believe that if this hopeful trend continues our intelligence community will be the better for it.