The verb to snoop describes the act of prying or being nosy. Snoop appeared in English print in 1893 when The Journal of American Folklore briefly touched on the origin of the word: “Snoop. — This word I have frequently heard in New England…Bartlett says it is from the Dutch snoopen and is peculiar to New York, meaning to steal and eat surreptitiously: thus, “A servant has snooped the cakes”.
Traditional use of the word snoop doesn’t imply anything particularly sinister, but the nickname for the UK’s controversial Draft Communications Data Bill – the “Snooper’s Charter” – certainly suggests something far more invasive and unwelcome. Had it been passed, the bill would have taken snooping to a whole new level, since the government and security agencies would have been allowed much greater access to snoop on all types of communications in the name of fighting terrorists, networks of child abusers and organized crime. Recent international terrorist attacks, ISIS atrocities and cases of child abuse within the entertainment industry form a compelling argument in support of the bill, but critics questioned its legitimacy and impact on civil liberty.
One such critic of governments that hope to gain more powers to snoop is the head of Apple, Tim Cook. In a recent interview with The Daily Telegraph, he spoke about the ineffectiveness of monitoring communications as a way to combat terrorism and claims it is a “cop-out to choose between privacy or security”. Mr. Cook went on to comment: “we shouldn’t give in to scaremongering or to people who fundamentally don’t understand the details” adding that “[customer] privacy is central to Apple’s principles”. Interestingly, The Economist takes a slightly more cynical view of this stance writing: “They [Apple and Google] say that they are simply responding to the demands of their users for privacy, but the heads of security agencies see the new approach as, at least in part, a response to what Edward Snowden, a contractor for America’s intelligence services, revealed about their abilities in 2014”, The Economist, Jan 2015.
Whatever their motivation, the outcome is the same: if the response of large tech companies and internet service providers to their customers’ demands is to hold less customer data, then there won’t be much for the government and security agencies to snoop on. Despite the UK Prime Minister David Cameron promising to ensure legislation of the failed Communications Data Bill following a Tory victory in the 2016 general election, it seems that the public still has some influence to sway the decision on the fate of its right to privacy.
