Orwellian renaming of surveillance strategies

Edward Snowden (Laura Poitras/ Praxis films)

Op-Ed: The former Bush administration, followed by media outlets, renamed practices such as water-boarding from being "torture" to "enhanced interrogation techniques".

The so-called Five Eyes group are now pushing a cooperative effort to  re-brand the "mass surveillance" they practice as "bulk collection", a much less menacing term that describes precisely the same surveillance. While mass surveillance is illegal, bulk collection of data is supposedly legal.

The Five Eyes(FVEY)_ consist of the US, UK, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada,| These countries carry out mass surveillance and share the information they collect  As part of the global War on Terror since 2001 the group has expanded their surveillance of the World Wide Web. Edward Snowden described the group as a "supra-national intelligence organisation that does not answer to the known laws of its own countries". Snowden's leaked documents show that FVEY spy on each other's citizens and then share the information to circumvent domestic laws on spying. For example Canada could spy on US citizens in a manner that is illegal for US spy agencies to do and then share the information with the US. Strictly speaking the US agencies did not do the spying on their own citizens. Some intelligence experts claim that the outrage caused by Snowden's revelations will not change the relationships or activities of the group that remains the most extensive espionage alliance in history so far.

A recent report whitewashes the activities of the British Government Communications Headquarter (GCHQ).

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The report is from the "Intelligence and Security Committee of the UK Parliament "(ISC). The members of the oversight committee are appointed by the Prime Minister. It took for ages for the ISC to even consider some of the material in the Snowden leaks. As well as working the distinction between  "bulk collection" and "mass surveillance" the same old saw about just collecting meta-data was brought up. Actual conversations and content of messages are not collected. The head of M15 dismissed the idea of collecting data on the websites people visit as an intrusion on privacy. The type of legislation that the intelligence community would like to see is what might be called a Snooper's Charter, that would not legislate rights for those targeted  by surveillance but codify the rights of those doing the spying.

An article in the Intercept describes the redefining of "mass surveillance" as "bulk collection" as follows:

"This re-definition game goes as follows: yes, we vacuum up and store literally as much of the internet as we possibly can. Then we analyze all the data about what you’re doing, with whom you’re speaking, and who your network of associates is. Based 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’re reading), and store as much of the rest of it as technology permits for future trolling. But don’t worry: we’re only reading the Bad People’s emails. So run along then: no mass surveillance here. Just bulk collection! It’s not mass surveillance, but “enhanced collection techniques.” "

A 2000 European Court of Human Rights decision found that Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights was violated by such data collection even if data collected is not reviewed or exploited in any way. The defense had argued that no privacy violation happens if the data is not reviewed or exploited. Another ruling in 2000 was that even storing records of a person's activity in public such as attending demonstrations could be a violation of privacy since  “public information can fall within the scope of private life where it is systematically collected and stored in files held by the authorities.”

Another editorial in the Guardian explains that spying can play the part of the guard role that will protect a system that benefits most elites. Information gathered with the supposed purpose of keeping us safe from terrorists will be used to keep opposition forces from threatening "national security" the security of the elites that benefit most from the system.

Sources:
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/03/13/orwellian-re-branding-mass-surveillance-merely-bulk-collection/
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/nhs-sell-out-tories-sign-largest-5323402
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/10/nsa-gchq-technology-create-social-mobility-spy-on-citizens
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/12/guardian-view-on-surveillance-parliament-slumbering-scrutineer?CMP=share_btn_tw