Report of the Independent Surveillance Review
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that lens. On the other hand, some of the most innovative companies, though not
always the biggest, have recently entered into active dialogue with the US government
to explore better ways of restoring levels of co-operation that meet all their needs. The
US president’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee has worked
to build new bridges between the US government and industry in the last two years,
and the president’s Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection Summit in February 2015
was another step in the direction of better relations – all of which matters greatly to UK
authorities since many of the companies most relevant to them are based in the US.18
5.72
The UK has its own Telecommunications Industry Security Advisory Council, which brings
government and the CEOs of the telecoms industry together, and its work will assume
greater importance in view of the challenges identified by this report.
5.73
In September 2014, Sir Nigel Sheinwald was appointed as the prime minister’s special
envoy on intelligence and law-enforcement data sharing. His role was to ‘work with
foreign governments and US CSPs to improve access to data across different jurisdictions
for intelligence and law enforcement purposes’.19 This work has concentrated on building
new strategic relations with the companies, working with the US government and others
to develop new solutions to current legal and jurisdictional problems. Co-operation is
certainly present, says Sheinwald, but remains ‘incomplete’. There is scope to streamline
the process by which the SIAs in the UK seek communications data direct from US CSPs,
and many companies are examining their own technical solutions to speed up the
processing of such requests.20
5.74
Efforts to bridge the current gap between the government and the major Internet
companies are certainly welcome but will have to go much further, on both sides,
if Internet governance is to be progressed. As the Global Commission on Internet
Governance makes clear in its recent findings, it is now ‘essential that governments,
collaborating with all other stakeholders, take steps to build confidence that the right to
privacy of all people is respected on the Internet [and] at the same time to ensure the
rule of law is upheld’.21
The International Context
5.75
There are very good reasons why the UK’s intelligence agencies share information with
partner agencies in other countries. However, there is a reasonable expectation from
18. Barack Obama, ‘Remarks by the President at the Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection
Summit’, Stanford University, 13 February 2015.
19. Cabinet Office, ‘Summary of the Work of the Prime Minister’s Special Envoy on Intelligence
and Law Enforcement Data Sharing – Sir Nigel Sheinwald’, 2015, <https://www.gov.uk/
government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/438326/Special_Envoy_work_
summary_final_for_CO_website.pdf>.
20. Ibid.
21. Global Commission on Internet Governance, ‘Towards a Social Compact for Digital Privacy
and Security’, CIGI/Chatham House, 2015.