Professor Charles Raab's presentation at the Festival of Ideas in 2015. You can hear the audio podcast of the presentation along with his colleagues by visiting: https://wp.me/p75LG5-5wy

1. Surveillance, Security and Privacy
Charles Raab
University of Edinburgh
Presentation at the RSA Fellows’ Media, Creative
Industries, Culture & Heritage Network
FESTIVAL OF IDEAS
Edinburgh, 21 March 2015
©Charles Raab 2015

2. ISC Call for Evidence (2013)
• ‘In addition to considering whether the
current statutory framework governing access
to private communications remains adequate,
the Committee is also considering the
appropriate balance between our individual
right to privacy and our collective right to
security.’

3. Problems
• Formulation mistaken, rhetorical and imprecise; impedes
deeper understanding of what is at stake for individual,
society and state
• Three difficulties:
‘privacy’
‘security’
‘national security v. personal privacy’
• Better question:
‘In combating terror and other threats through
surveillance, how can we ensure that, by applying more
nuanced understanding, the claims for security measures
do not always prevail when other values and rights are
also at stake?’

4. ‘Privacy’
• Fundamental (but not absolute) individual right
• Individual-right assumption ignores its wider importance
• Crucial underpinning of interpersonal relationships, of society
itself, and of the workings of democratic political system
• When protected, fabric of society, political processes and
exercise of important freedoms are thereby protected
• When eroded, society and polity are also harmed
• In the public interest, and not only in the interest of the
individual, to protect privacy (Raab, 2012)

5. Different Types of Privacy
• Privacy of the person
• Privacy of thought and feeling
• Privacy of behaviour and action
• Privacy of location and space
• Privacy of personal communication
• Privacy of personal data and image
• Privacy of association
(Finn et al., 2013)

6. ‘Security’
• Also a right
• Many ways of understanding this or its cognate,
‘public safety’
• Personal security
• Collective: international, national, local,
neighbourhood, social group
• Objective: probabilities of risk
• Subjective: feelings of (in)security
how can these two can be reconciled?

7. Different Types of Security
• In security/privacy debate, narrow definition
Mainly related to terrorism, organised crime
Maybe border security
• For general public, ‘security’ usually much more related to:
Physical security
Political security
Socio-economic security
Cultural Security
Environmental security
‘Radical uncertainty’ security
Information security
• Privacy and civil liberties (or freedoms) valuable because of security and
safety (not least, of personal data) they provide for individuals, groups and
societies (Liberty and Security in a Changing World, 2013, pp. 14-16; Raab, 2014)

8. Review Group on Intelligence and Communications
Technologies (USA)
Liberty and Security in a Changing World (2013, pp. 14-16)
‘We suggest careful consideration of the following principles:
‘1. The United States Government must protect, at once, two different
forms of security: national security and personal privacy.
‘In the American tradition, the word “security” has had multiple
meanings. In contemporary parlance, it often refers to national security or
homeland security. One of the government’s most fundamental
responsibilities is to protect this form of security, broadly understood. At the
same time, the idea of security refers to a quite different and equally
fundamental value, captured in the Fourth Amendment to the United States
Constitution: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses,
papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be
violated . . . ”. Both forms of security must be protected.’

9. ‘National Security v. Personal
Privacy’?
• Relationship far more complex despite conventional rhetoric of ‘opposed’
rights or values that must be ‘balanced’
• Scepticism about idea of ‘balance’ or ‘trade-off’ if both privacy and
security are contested and inter-related concepts
• ‘Balancing’:
between one individual right and another?, or
between an individual right and a collective right?, or
between an individual right and social or collective utility?
a method?
an outcome of a method?
• Requires specification and precision if ‘balancing’ – even if inescapably
built into our mindset – is to be removed from realm of shorthand and
slogan and applied to evaluating and regulating surveillance

10. ‘National Security v. Personal
Privacy’?
• ‘How much security should we give up to protect privacy?’
rarely asked
• Assumptions about risk, equilibrium and common metric for
weighing not clear and doubtfully warranted
• How much (and whose) privacy should or should not
outweigh how much (and whose) security?
• ‘Balancing’ silent about method by which ‘balance’ can be
determined and challenged, and about who is to determine it
• Legal case decisions: source for understanding and disputing
weighing process and arguments used about necessity and
proportionality
• Not clear how understandings can be used in strategic and
operational work of intelligence and security services, and
brought to bear in oversight and scrutiny

11. PRISMS Project: Selected Survey Findings
• Both privacy and security important to people
• People do not value security and privacy in terms of a
‘trade-off’
• No significant relationship between people’s valuation
of privacy and their valuation of security
• Significant correlation between valuation of personal
and general security

12. c.d.raab@ed.ac.uk