At this point in the film, surely no one doubts that the intelligence services of all countries monitor their citizens. Safeguarding the country from internal and external threats is the reason used by these agencies to use covert methods or, at least, without letting those being watched know that they are being observed. Artificial intelligence (AI) developments have represented a great leap forward, and spies and security forces have benefited from facial recognition and biometric systems, in exchange for filling the streets with cameras and compromising the privacy of people. people. But the best way to fight the enemy is to know him in depth, and for that you need information and lots of data.
This is why UK spy agencies – as reported by The Guardian – have asked the British government to relax laws limiting the amount and quality of data they can use to train their AI models. Unsurprisingly, this claim has caused privacy experts and civil liberties groups to express alarm at the move that would remove some of the legal protection introduced in 2016 in the UK.
On the other hand, if the proposal goes through, it would make it easier for GCHQ, MI6 and MI5 to use certain types of data that they are now unable to use thanks to existing safeguards designed to protect privacy and prevent misuse of sensitive information. . Specifically, spy agencies want more lax rules governing the use of large volumes of information, known as massive personal data sets (BPDs).
Intelligence services frequently use BPDs that are drawn from a wide range of sources. The agencies argue that these data sets help them identify potential terrorists and future informants, so they are calling for relaxing the rules on how they use those BPDs for which citizens already have "little or no expectation of privacy."
Intelligence services believe that this information should be placed in a new category of BPD that could include, for example, content from video-sharing platforms, podcasts, academic papers, public records, and company information. It is public information, and consequently citizens already know that it is accessible to anyone, and therefore –according to spy agencies– they are not concerned about their privacy.
The proposed changes were submitted to David Anderson, a senior lawyer and member of the House of Lords, who was commissioned by the UK Home Office to review the changes. In his research, Anderson said the agencies' proposals are intended to replace the requirement that a judge approve the review and retention of BPDs, with a faster clearance process.
This lawyer explained that agencies had used AI for many years and were already training machine learning models with BPD. He also said that the significant increase in the type and volume of data sets being used by agencies means that machine learning tools "are proving useful" for British intelligence.
For this reason, Anderson concluded that the law should be amended to create "a less onerous set of safeguards" for the new category of BPD, saying that "the deregulatory effect of the proposed changes is relatively minor." However, he recommended maintaining a degree of ministerial and judicial oversight in the process, rather than allowing members of the intelligence services to decide for themselves which BPDs are placed in the new category.
