UK-Japan trade deal data laundering threat

Upon prompting by the Open Rights Group, I've written to my MP, Layla Moran, about the data laundering provisions of the UK-Japan trade agreement.

Dear Layla,

You may or may not be aware that that new UK-Japan trade agreement includes expansive data transfer clauses posing a threat to our privacy. These provisions essentially create a surreptitious process for your data to be transferred to other jurisdictions with poor data protection records, including the US.

MPs seem to have been deliberately kept in the dark about these measures which amount to turning the UK into a data laundering haven for unaccountable multinational corporations and countries with weak data protection standards.

I would encourage you and your MP colleagues to call for the freezing of these sections of the treaty - as happened with the unconscionable intellectual property chapters of the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement.

The dangerous undermining of UK citizen and other residents' rights is likely to be an ongoing feature of the government's desperate rush to enter into trade deals they can promote as Brexit successes. In these challenging times, significant vigilance will be required on the part of all our parliamentary representatives to protect fundamental rights in the UK.

I this instance I would ask you to ask the government to “freeze data transfer clauses from the new UK-Japan trade agreement”. This will allow the agreement to go ahead but would freeze (stop) the harmful clauses endangering our privacy.

Thank you.

Yours sincerely,

Ray Corrigan

You can find the  UK-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement documents containing treaty information and a summary of the agreement online.

Jim Killock and Heather Burns at the Open Rights Group have prepared a succinct explanation of the issues. The agreement  contains brand new clauses which priotise the “free flow of data” between the UK and Japan, and from there on to other trade partners, over and above data protection rights.

"A “free flow of data” approach would be a radical departure from the current position. Today, UK companies must only transfer your personal data where they can guarantee that you continue to have similar rights over access, correction and deletion of that data. The UK Japan agreement would force the UK to accept lower data protection frameworks, including voluntary self-regulation, as compatible with the UK’s world leading privacy framework, in Article 8.80 and 8.84.

The UK-Japan agreement, together with the UK adequacy decision, would create a “gateway” for your data to flow to other countries that also have “free flow of data” trade arrangements with Japan. Worryingly, this will permit UK data to be transferred to the USA, without it being kept under GDPR-style protections.

Once data is exported from the UK to the USA via Japan under this agreement, your rights would vastly reduce. In the USA, there is no automatic right for you to know where the data is held, or by whom; you cannot prevent resale, reuse, or the data being put to new uses. There is no right to prevent your data from being used in ways that are discriminatory, or unfair. You cannot ask for your data to be deleted. If it is lost, then there is no legal barrier to a third party from obtaining it and using it. And there is no simple recourse to you if your data is breached or sold...

It is likely to prove impossible for the EU to conclude a data protection adequacy decision for the UK while these unrestricted data flows with Japan, and its trade partners are in place. The EU specifically excluded data flows from their trade agreement with Japan. Although Japan has an adequacy decision from the EU, it had to put specific arrangements in place for EU data to stay in Japan.

This stopped the data of people in the EU — including the UK — from being shifted to an overlapping legal regime and freely siphoned off to third countries. This trade deal bypasses both of those safeguards."

ORG also have a more comprehensive briefing on how the UK-Japan deal severs post Brexit data adequacy. (Pdf version available too).

There are also other serious concerns with the agreement, particularly in relation to general monitoring provisions - upload filters like the EU copyright directive's Article 17 - and bans on circumventing DRM/TPM even for the facilitation of interoperability or repair.

Given the Johnson government Svengali Cumming's obsession with eviscerating the controls on the collection and exploitation of big data, an intense and ongoing focus on resisting such dismantling of fundamental privacy and data protection rights is certainly in order.

Cory Doctorow on our movement towards digital alchemy

Cory Doctorow gave a terrific 13 minute talk at a recent O'Reilly conference on how it is time to stop and do something about DRM - a world in which everything [the internet of things] is made of computers is not just one with anti-competitive effects but which is a nightmare for privacy and security.

In ancient times alchemists were a bit like scientists, Cory tells us. They used something like the scientific method to attempt to understand the laws of nature. If they could not reproduce results they blamed it on demons and superstition - the demons changed the rules of nature, the alchemists believed, in order to prevent anyone understanding the universe.  Alchemists also kept what they found secret, rather than sharing and engaging in peer review and efforts to recreate results as scientists do. The result was lots of alchemists finding out for themselves that mercury was poisonous. The enlightenment demonstrated that sharing of knowledge worked in the public good.

O'Reilly have released 3 minutes of the talk freely for sharing via on YouTube



Cory, as ever, has lots of engaging tales to tell. One of the most serious was perhaps that of a security researcher who suffers from diabetes. He discovered a flaw in an insulin pump. The built in wifi would enable a stranger to take control of the pump and kill a diabetic using it from 30 feet away. But he couldn't publish the details because he would be revealing DRM circumvention instructions, a felony in the US, punishable by up to 5 years in jail. He could refuse to use the pump but not tell others why or how it was unsafe.

Other researchers have shown it is possible to take remote control of a Chrysler Jeep via the internet since it has a Sprint network SIM. 1.4 million of these vehicles in the US could be driven from anywhere on the internet, access to acceleration, brakes and steering, all controllable remotely.

MP3 players and smartphones are likely improving long term commercial prospects for hearing aid vendors. But future hearing aids will be computers. General purpose technology in your head but programmed and controlled not by the user but the manufacturer or supplier. They will know what we hear, when we hear it, filter what it doesn't want us to hear or even make us hear things depending on how they are configured. And they will have DRM. As will skyscrapers with seismic dampers that keep them from falling down and smart thermostats that enable power companies to reach into our home and turn the temperature down and stop us turning it up again.

Yet when we make it illegal to crack or circumvent DRM we make it attractive for commercial enterprises to engage in this type of nuisance behaviour, especially if they are making hardware on razor thin margins.

Cory concluded by noting the stuff - DRM - designed in an effort to maximise revenues for the entertainment business, is driving us towards a dystopian future where we will "be Huxleyed into the full Orwell". It's a new age of alchemy, a demon haunted world where we're not allowed to understand the technology and internet of things we live amongst. But do take a small break and listen to the whole talk yourself. It's 13 minutes well spent.

The end of one recorder era

My Panasonic DMR EX75 HDD/DVD recorder has given up on the Freeview signal again. Checking the usual overheating 680 microfarad capacitor, I didn't find obvious signs of failure. It wasn't blowing it's top as the previous failures had done, for example -

But given the inexpert deposit of excess solder I left the last time it's possible the failure was internal or further under the board. I decided to attempt to replace the capacitor again anyway. Unfortunately two attempts to replace it failed, largely due to my incompetent soldering skills, I suspect.

Tinning the soldering iron tip proved unusually problematic this time. So I cleaned it with wire wool before the second attempt (and after it had cooled completely to room temperature). Note that you need to be really careful with this not to strip the iron surface bare or you'll find yourself in need of a new soldering iron.

As I said before, though, if you're thinking of tackling something like this, especially if you are an infrequent actor in such an arena, be sure to snip the legs of the failed capacitor quite high up on the first pass, so that you have a solid base to crimp the legs of the new capacitor to before soldering. My original failure to do this meant successive replacements over the years have been increasingly difficult to crimp/graft and solder.

I seem now to have reached the point of no return, at least as far as my rusty engineering repair skills are concerned.

I blame middle aged eye-sight and the need for reading glasses for close up work too. It's probably just as well I don't have to build flight simulation rigs any more, though I'm pretty sure I could still do the mathematics, the modelling, the design and the testing the parts of aircraft to destruction bit - operating the rigs and running the tests was never as tricky as constructing them.

Well the saga of the Panasonic DMR EX75 HDD/DVD recorder draws to a close. In any case, the machine won't now pick up the Freeview signal and though I can play what was recorded up to losing the signal, I can't record anything else. The old box of electronics is going to have to be retired. It's taken in

• the perils of online purchasing
• the monumental irritating stupidity of DRM
• the dealings with an approved Panasonic repair shop, J.F. Associates
• the stamina required to deal with zombie rule bound "customer service" centres of large companies
• Panasonic's centre will, once the requisite quantities of precisely the correct type of metaphorical bureaucratic blood are donated, and are pushed in the right direction by an independent Panasonic repair centre, replace faulty parts on their machines
• the freedom to tinker (or not) with electronic boxes of tricks like HDD/DVD recorders
• did I mention the monumentally irritating stupidity of DRM
• the power and the economy of the freedom to tinker
• the value of the internet and all those helpful people connected to it, willing to help out those in need of tinkering tips and tricks
• the easy access to cheap electronic components the replacement of which can negate the need to replace an expensive box of electronic tricks unnecessarily
• and not to forget the incredibly monumentally irritating stupidity of DRM

I hope the next recorder finding it's way into the B2fxxx household has a long but less eventful existence.

Doctorow's three law's

Cory Doctorow waxing lyrical about DRM, creators and publishers is always worth a listen.



First law: Any time someone puts a lock on something that belongs to you, and won't give you a key, they're not doing it for your benefit.

Second law: It's hard to monetize fame but it's impossible to monetize obscurity i.e. fame won't guarantee fortune, but no one has ever gotten rich by being obscure.

Third law: making it easy to censor and spy on everyone to protect copyright is a bad idea and bad practice i.e. information doesn't want to be free, people do.

Cory Doctorow & Barton Gellman at SXSW

Cory Doctorow and Barton Gellman discussing Edward Snowden, secure communications, encryption tools so easy your boss can use them, privacy, the revealing nature of metadata and mass surveillance, at SXSW should be required viewing.