A seismic shift in the telecoms sector, centred on WhatsApp,  prompted a change in UK surveillance law. 

On 4 June 2024, I spoke at a conference at Kings College London in celebration of the work of the eminent political scientist Susan Strange and her ideas on the structural power of States and corporations. I applied her theory to WhatsApp and a seismic shift in the telecoms sector that prompted a change in UK surveillance law. What follows is an edited version of my speech, including a reference to an astonishingly prescient audio recording of Susan Strange from 1995. 

When I first explored the concept of structural power for my book ‘The Closing of the Net’ in 2016, I assumed we were talking about the likes of Facebook, or Twitter / X , controlling our content and determining what  we are able to see – or  not able to see – on the screen of a smartphone. I felt that whoever controlled what people could see on such a tiny screen, would have enormous power over knowledge dissemination. In terms of Susan Strange’s theory, they controlled the knowledge structures. 

I still think that, but times change. Today we are witnessing a seismic shift  in the structural power in the communications sector.  It’s about WhatsApp and  I would argue  that it controls not only a knowledge structure but also a security structure with implications for policy-makers. This  shift   has happened so fast it has barely registered.  However, the UK  government has quietly made a new law to address it. 

The popularity of WhatsApp and online chat platforms has sneaked up on us over the past 10 years. Today, it  is the main way that people communicate – they can message and they talk to each other. They can call nationally and internationally,  to the people just next door or  across borders, and they do it without thinking? How often are you messaging someone and they hit the call button – they don’t even know if they calling over WhatsApp or over the mobile phone network.  Did you know 2/3 of UK mobile phone users use WhatsApp?  

This seismic shift is a significant tipping point for online communications, and  I will come back to it in a bit. First I want to give it some context.

When Susan Strange wrote States and Markets in 1988 she could never have envisaged anything like WhatsApp. The phone was a dumb instrument. Didn’t even tell you who was calling you. The phone network was a monopoly held by BT and other national phone companies.  They were the only ones who could connect you. For Susan Strange, it was whoever controls the means of communication who held structural power. She wrote about computer networks, satellite communications and fibre optic cable and how the networked capabilities they opened up could be a source of power. But the way that structural  power in communications has evolved was way beyond Susan’s Strange’s wildest imagination! 

It in the 1990s,  shortly after States and Markets was  published, governments – especially UK – were trying to liberalise the telecoms market and remove the stranglehold of the old State monopoly phone companies.
 
New mobile phone networks emerged, with phones that you could put in a pocket and that had a tiny little screen. This was  the  GSM system and the phones were designed so they could transmit  data. It was very forward thinking for that time and it led to the development of the smart phones that we have today. There’s just one thing though that I’d like to highlight and you will see why in a moment  – these mobile phones in their original design could not be intercepted, until law enforcement complained and the design was changed. 

It’s fascinating to hear Susan Strange speaking to this very point in this rare audio recording .  It is the last known recording of her, dating from 1995, and  is located in  the LSE Digital Library.  She is talking about money laundering, and the way that money launderers use the  secrecy of banks to conceal their activities. She makes the link with telecoms. She says the German police had complained they were  handicapped because when people used static telecoms you could bug them, but you can’t bug a mobile phone, adding  if all gangsters use mobile phones, you can’t track them. This is the very same issue that is bothering law enforcement authorities today. 

With a remarkable visionary perspective for her time, Susan Strange also spoke in that audio clip about how authority is shared between state and non state and across boundaries. She commented that the firm that has power to relocate its production, to decide which technology to deploy, is engaging in politics, and that may be uncomfortable for vested interests.  

Do keep these thoughts in mind as you read on.   

In parallel, the Internet became available  for the public connections and the World Wide Web was invented. But the real drivers of online communications – the online platforms like  Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp  were not even a glimmer in someone’s eye. They came along a decade or so later.  

And so, fast forward to today, in 2024, the Internet has grown up, it’s now a mature communications service and arguably the bedrock of the new knowledge structures on a  scale that was unforeseeable in Susan Strange’s lifetime. We are talking about  mega global companies that control not only the transmission of  communications for millions of people, but they can see into our very soul. They control the means of communication for everything we say and do online. These new global monopolies include Meta, which owns the public platforms Facebook and Instagram, and WhatsApp. 

This rapid dominance of WhatsApp, now effectively a global communications provider, is the seismic shift I’m talking about. WhatsApp  has 2 billion users worldwide, and two thirds of the UK population use it. What’s curious is how WhatsApp is not only a knowledge structure, but has become a security structure, and this has major policy implications.  And for that reason, WhatsApp has become the epicentre of a political battle about security and how we can keep people safe online.  

Susan Strange wrote about security structures, but she considered security – keeping citizens safe from harms -  to be the domain of the State, and largely about military security. She would never have foreseen how  new security structures would become  embedded within the new knowledge structures, and specifically in messaging platforms  that just look like little bubbles on a screen.  

WhatsApp is an encrypted service. To be technically correct, it is  end-to-end encrypted. This means messages are encrypted from the minute you press send, to the point where they are read by the person at the other end. No-one, not even the platform itself, can read the content of the messages. Encrypting  messages is a way of keeping them safe from hackers, or eavesdroppers, and other bad  people. It also keeps them safe from State security services bugging people’s calls. Journalist and human rights defenders are examples of people who benefit from it. 

The problem is that encryption also prevents traditional law enforcement authorities from intercepting the calls of criminals. Interception or screening  of users communications  on an end-to-end encrypted service  is technically complex, and cannot be done without compromising peoples privacy and making the vulnerable to all kinds of online security threats. And that’s why they say it keeps people safe.  

In the UK, law enforcement have a problem.  From their viewpoint they would say they lose the ability to intercept communications of criminals  - and hence it is harder to keep people safe -  unless WhatsApp modifies to its platform in a way which is technical not feasible without weakening privacy and security for everyone else. And I wonder if they are panicking a bit because two-thirds of the UK population now use this as their communications method of choice. But it’s also clear that WhatsApp has a role in the security structure and this raises a dilemma. 

The reaction of the UK government was to change the law with the aim of putting pressure on messaging platforms,  and  forcing them to enable law enforcement access. It’s in the Investigatory Powers Amendment Act. WhatsApp is now a telecoms provider under UK law with an obligation to assist law enforcement agencies.  And it’s been slipped through almost unnoticed. 

There is an obvious parallel with the early GSM mobiles. However, because of the technical infeasibility to comply, it only serves to  inflame the ongoing political battle between State and private structures, with  no resolution in sight. 

And so we began with the knowledge structure, and we end with the security structure. WhatsApp is a private actor controlling a new 21st century security structure, embedded in a knowledge structure. What looks like little bubbles on a small screen is a global communications network and a power broker so mighty it can put fear into governments. They do have the power to decide what technology to deploy,  to engage in politics and to remove their services from countries. As Susan Strange so prophetically said, it is certainly an uncomfortable message for the vested interests of the State.   

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