11.
SERVICE PROVIDERS
Scope and sources
11.1.
This Chapter summarises the submissions made to me by service providers, both
domestic and international.
11.2.
I received open written submissions from the Internet Services Providers’ Association,
BT and Vodafone, together with a short joint submission from Facebook, Google,
Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo, each of which I met subsequently (as I did Apple) in
London and/or in the US. Confidential submissions were received from BT (again),
TalkTalk, EE, Three, Telefonica and Virgin Media. Many CSPs are represented in the
Communications Data Strategy Group, two of whose meetings I was invited to attend,
and I exchanged views with others at Wilton Park conferences in October and
November.1
11.3.
Service providers do not of course have a single view on the issues with which this
Review is concerned. They offer different services in competition with each other and
have different business models. Yet there are a number of common strands to their
thinking, and on some matters they have made efforts to come to a joint view.
The importance of trust
11.4.
All service providers set considerable store by the levels of trust that their customers
place in them. For example, the US companies put to me that:
“… we must earn and maintain user trust, and users expect that their personal
communications be treated with the same respect online, as they would be
offline.”2
Vodafone, likewise, told me that “…the one word we consider to be the bedrock of our
business is trust.”3 Service providers consider that trust is best promoted by protecting
their customers’ privacy (rather than, for example, going out of their way to assist law
enforcement by revealing the details of communications which they have provided).
11.5.
1
2
3
However, at 2.28 above, I set out some recent survey figures for user trust, which
demonstrate much lower figures than providers want. Indeed, they feel that they have
been damaged directly or indirectly by the revelations in the Snowden Documents,
and the accompanying perception that they cannot be trusted to protect their
customers’ data. This, and a wish to make up lost ground, heavily influence their
approach to questions of surveillance by governments. The accelerated rate at which
some service providers have moved towards services encrypted by default is the
clearest example of this over the past two years. Moreover, they are sensitive to the
views and criticisms of civil society groups and seek to be better regarded by them in
order, at least in part, to help build up levels of customer trust.
Unattributed quotations in this Chapter are taken from various of these meetings.
Joint evidence to the Review from Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo, October 2014.
Evidence to the Review, October 2014.
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