INTELLIGENCE & SECURITY COMMITTEE

The Westminster Parliament’s spy watchdog has called for an investigation into Britain’s laws on intelligence eavesdropping as it cleared GCHQ of flouting the existing rules.

The Intelligence and Security Committee ruled on Wednesday that the listening station in Cheltenham acted with ministerial backing when it requested electronic intercepts from the US National Security Agency’s PRISM programme.

But the committee has raised questions about whether there is a need for new laws.

GCHQ has faced criticism after NSA whistleblower and US fugitive Edward Snowden claimed that British intelligence used PRISM by circumventing British laws.

The committee said the claims were ‘unfounded’ and that in each case where GCHQ sought information from the US, an intercept warrant signed by a minister was already in place. Crucially, however, it has not yet investigated what happened when the NSA handed over unsolicited intelligence.

And, in dealing with only the ‘content of private communications’, the committee has not examined the vast majority of the intelligence generated by PRISM – data which reveals who sends emails and other messages, to whom they send them, at what time and from where.

The watchdog suggested that the ‘law has not caught up with technology’ that allows the listening post to tap millions of emails.