INTELLIGENCE GATHERING

It has been claimed that Washington gave Britain’s spying and intelligence gathering centre at GCHQ more than £100 million over the last three years, raising questions over how much the U.S. has been influencing the work of British intelligence.

According to documents released into the public domain by whistleblower Edward Snowden, the British eavesdropping agency was expected to ‘pull its weight’.

One document states that weaker regulation for British spies than American agents is one of the intelligence services’ ‘selling points’ for the U.S.

Such leaks will raise yet more questions for GCHQ and government ministers who oversee it operationally, particularly in relation to the extent to which the United States makes pressing demands of Britain in its intelligence-gathering activities.

In a document from 2010, GCHQ said the US National Security Agency had ‘raised a number of issues with regards to meeting (its) minimum expectations’, and GCHQ ‘remains short of the full NSA ask’.

A classified cache leaked to The Guardian reveals the UK’s biggest fear is that… ‘US perceptions of the […] partnership diminish, leading to loss of access, and/or reduction in investment to the UK’.

A copy of a temporary document to allow US fugitive and whistleblower Edward Snowden to cross the border into Russia.

These latest revelations leaked by Mr Snowden, a former NSA contractor, and who has been charged with espionage in the U.S., left Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport yesterday were he has been since June after exposing PRISM, a U.S. intelligence gathering project that snoops on private individuals accounts, emails and telephone calls. Snowden has now been granted refugee status in Russia amid Western concerns he is now in the embrace of Moscow’s secret services. The granting of refugee status pending his application for temporary political asylum is certain to spark fury in Washington which had urged President Putin to deport him to the US to face espionage charges.

Previously, GCHQ was criticised after Mr Snowden claimed British intelligence agents used the PRISM system to bypass UK laws.

Last week Parliament’s spy watchdog called for an investigation into the laws on intelligence eavesdropping, saying they ‘may not be fit for purpose’.

The latest documents reveal the NSA gave GCHQ £22.9million in 2009, £39.9million in 2010, and at least another £34.7m in 2011-12.

The 2010 payment included £4million to support GCHQ’s work for NATO forces in Afghanistan, and £17.2million to fund the agency’s Mastering the Internet project, which gathers and stores vast amounts of ‘raw’ information ready for analysis.

Also funded by the NSA was redevelopment of GCHQ’s sister site in Bude, Cornwall, to the tune of £15.5million. The site intercepts transatlantic cables that carry internet traffic.

In return, the documents suggest GCHQ has to take the American view into account when deciding what to prioritise.

The money has been an important source of income for the British agency as it has been forced to cut costs and has shed more than 300 of its 6,000 staff.

Documents show GCHQ is heavily investing in harvesting personal information from mobile phones and apps, and wants to be able to ‘exploit any phone, anywhere, anytime’.

Some GCHQ staff have expressed concern about ‘the morality and ethics of their operational work, particularly given the level of deception involved’.

Shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander MP said…

… The vital work of the intelligence agencies requires effective and thorough oversight by the Intelligence and Security Committee on behalf of Parliament, and by ministers, and in the case of GCHQ, by the Foreign Secretary.

… The latest reports in the Guardian only underline the importance of the Foreign Secretary and the Intelligence and Security Committee being able to assure the public that the legal framework within which our intelligence agencies operate is both being adhered to and is fit for purpose.