Former UK GCHQ Head of Signals Intelligence "Google and Facebook ‘a danger to democracy’"
Google
and Facebook ‘a danger to democracy’
·
Internet giants have more personal information than any
intelligence agency has ever had or should have, according to a former director
of Britain’s intelligence and signals agency.
David Omand said profiting from
information that people freely gave to companies such as Google and Facebook
was “truly dangerous and a major threat to democracy”. In contrast to
“extraordinarily strictly regulated” British intelligence agencies, the power
of the internet companies was uncontrolled.
“Nobody has worked out how to
control the private use of our information,” he said.
“It’s a fact
that the internet companies know more about me, you, everyone in the hall than
any intelligence agency ever could or should know.”
Sir David, who was in charge at
the signals intelligence organisation GCHQ in the 1990s, likened the rise of
the internet to the story about blues guitarist Robert Johnson, who was said to
have sold his soul to the devil at a crossroads in exchange for becoming the
best musician in the world.
“Then he had to pay for his
success — and the internet is like that,” he said. “It was all wonderful to
start with, all open, the bad guys weren’t there.
“Now the downside of the internet
is very serious.
“It is very dangerous, dangerous
for children, dangerous for anyone trying to do financial business.”
Sir David accepted that the
Investigatory Powers Act 2016, which, for example, compelled a senior judge to
countersign any surveillance warrant, had left Britain’s agencies like “going
on a football pitch with eight players and a goalkeeper with his hands tied”.
He said while there had been
qualms within the intelligence community, “in a democracy you are entitled to
know what kinds of methods are being used to keep us safe”.
“The big revelation over the last
couple of years has not been about government intelligence agencies,” he added,
“it has been about the private sector.”
The Cambridge Analytica scandal —
in which the company used the personal data of Facebook users for political
advertising, for which Facebook was fined — showed how information was becoming
the “feedstock for political campaigning”.
He said people “freely give our
personal data in return for having an internet free at the point of use so we
can do our searches and so on”.
“And that information is
monetised, and that is the feedstock for political campaigning, where a
political party can send different messages to different groups of people
because they already knew what individuals likely political preferences are,”
Sir David said.
“This is truly dangerous. I think
it is a major threat to democracy and it is uncontrolled.”
Sir David said Britain was
vulnerable to a cyberattack, adding: “It is difficult to give any assurance
that the attackers will not get through and cause damage, perhaps damage which
they were not even intending.’’
Richard Aldrich, who has written a
history on GCHQ, said the agency’s challenge over the next decade was to tackle
the threats posed by everyday items that were internet-enabled.
“They have to worry about
everything we buy in the shop that costs under £10 that connects to the internet,” he said.
“Because the degree of cybersecurity is very weak.”
He envisaged a scenario in which
10 internet-enabled fridges across Los Angeles could be “simultaneously set
on fire by hackers”.
“Who needs an air force when you
have the internet of things? This is very, very alarming and difficult
territory,’’ he said.
The Times
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