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A Democratic Licence to Operate
Recommendation 19: A NISO should provide support and assistance to the Investigatory
Powers Tribunal and the judicial commissioners.
Collaboration between the Public and Private Sectors
5.67
This Review is primarily concerned with the relationship between the government’s use
of data and the rights of the public. Nevertheless, as we have sought to demonstrate, the
private sector (and CSPs in particular) is a crucial part of the picture, and the relationship
between the public and private sectors is a key element in the grand bargain we outline
above. It is beyond the scope and the research of our inquiry to make recommendations
for the private sector directly, but we have treated it in this Review as essential context
to our understanding of the problem and our suggestions for improvements to the
current situation.
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The private sector is highly internationalised and evolves rapidly, yet its role tends to be
overlooked in debates over privacy and security. Given that commercial organisations are
the largest generators and guardians of citizens’ data, it is important to understand the
types and volumes of data collected and what is subsequently done with it. The collection
and manipulation of bulk data is not something unique to government, but rather a
pervasive technique which a growing number of organisations, both in the private as
well as the public sector, now use to interact with the public as citizens and customers.
5.69
In recognising its importance in debates over privacy and intrusion, we note certain
features in the relationship between government and the private sector. One is that levels
of co-operation between government agencies and Internet companies are variable.
In the immediate wake of the Snowden disclosures, many of the large US companies
actively distanced themselves from governments to reassure their customers that they
were not complicit in the allegations being made.
5.70
Two years on from the original disclosures, however, the picture is more nuanced. From
our visits and evidence sessions, the Panel are confident that good working relationships
still exist in the UK at the operational level between CSPs and the law-enforcement
agencies and SIAs. This is inevitably so where CSPs have infrastructure located in this
country, over and above their provision of services within the UK. The main challenge
that law-enforcement, security and intelligence officers now face is that they must
establish working relations for the potential provision of data with a growing number
of other providers – such as mobile virtual network operators which provide services
on another company’s wireless network, and many other new types of communications
providers – particularly those based overseas.
5.71
At the strategic and policy level, the Panel note that co-operation between the
government and CSPs is more disjointed. From our evidence sessions, we understand
that some of the biggest Internet companies see themselves as fundamentally global
enterprises and interpret their relations with all governments around the world through