Tag Archives: Edward Snowden

Britain, Government, National Security, Society, United States

Spy chief speaks for the first time over unrepentant Snowden

NATIONAL SECURITY

BRITAIN’S ability to keep its citizens safe was compromised as a result of the intelligence leaks by US traitor Edward Snowden, a spy chief has revealed in an excoriating attack.

Jeremy Fleming, head of Britain’s eavesdropping agency GCHQ, said the unrepentant former spy had caused “real and unnecessary damage” to the security of the UK and its allies.

In his first remarks on the devastating impact of the security breach five years ago, he said the American fugitive, who is now living in exile in Russia, needed to be held to account for his “illegal” actions. His comments came as Snowden said he had “no regrets” about revealing sensitive information via the pages of The Guardian newspaper.

In a rare statement given on the anniversary of the biggest leak of secret documents in its history, Mr Fleming said: “GCHQ’s mission is to help keep the UK safe. What Edward Snowden did five years ago was illegal and compromised our ability to do that, causing real and unnecessary damage to the security of the UK and our allies. He should be accountable for that.”

Mr Fleming, who was deputy director general of MI5 until last year, also made clear that the agency was striving for greater transparency long before the leaks. In a pointed remark, he told The Guardian: “It’s important that we continue to be as open as we can be, and I am committed to the journey we began over a decade ago to greater transparency.”

His comments came as Snowden, 34, showed no remorse over leaking classified data from the US National Security Agency (NSA). Speaking to The Guardian, he said: “People say nothing has changed: that there is still mass surveillance. That is not how you measure change. Look back before 2013 and look at what has happened since. Everything changed.

“The Government and corporate sector preyed on our ignorance. But now we know. People are aware now. People are still powerless to stop it, but we are trying. The revelations made the fight more even.” Asked if he had any regrets he said “no”, before adding: “If I had wanted to be safe, I would not have left Hawaii.”

Snowden was living in Hawaii while he worked as a security contractor for the NSA. It was there that he acquired the data he later leaked, including details of the precise methods used by the intelligence agencies to track terrorist plots. A year after the leaks – by which time Snowden had fled to Hong Kong before subsequently settling and given immunity in Russia – it was estimated that a quarter of the serious criminals being tracked by GCHQ had fallen off the radar because they had been alerted to the covert methods being used to track them.

Theresa May, then as Home Secretary, revealed how Britain’s ability to track terrorists and crime gangs was severely damaged because of the leaks. She said police and security services were finding it harder to monitor the electronic communications used by fanatics and master criminals.

The former head of GCHQ, Sir Iain Lobban, said in 2013 that terrorists were known to be “discussing how to avoid vulnerable communications methods.” And just last month, Bill Evanina, director of the US National Counter-intelligence and Security Centre, said Snowden’s leaks would continue to cause problems for years to come. He told a conference that only about 1 per cent of the documents taken by him had been released.

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Britain, Government, Human Rights, Intelligence, National Security, Politics, Scotland, Society

Protecting privacy requires Government action…

SURVEILLANCE

In the early 1990s a Scottish newspaper exposed the details of a routine police practice known as ‘metering’. This involved a senior detective and police officer requesting from British Telecom (BT) one of their customer’s phone records. Such records detailed the telephone numbers that person was calling, when the call took place, and the call’s duration. British Telecom handed these details over under a ‘private agreement’ it had formulated between itself and the police.

Not only did the newspaper reveal this practice, but divulged how little political or judicial oversight there was of it. Later, the Secretary of State for Scotland at the time, Ian Lang, announced new guidelines on metering for Scotland’s police forces, and a new reporting system was introduced to keep track of the practice. Details came to light following the theft of metering surveillance documents from the Headquarters of Lothian and Borders police in Edinburgh, in a saga that came to be known as Fettesgate.

More than two decades on one could be tempted to change the word ‘metering’ to ‘metadata’. In recent months, Edward Snowden, a former US intelligence officer with the National Security Agency (NSA), revealed the phenomenal scale of surveillance of the public’s phone, text, e-mail and social network communications, carried out by the NSA in joint collaboration with Britain’s GCHQ in Cheltenham. Matters arising now are the same issues that applied in 1992. Unlike the actual listening into telephone conversations, much of this surveillance focusses around metadata in the reading of e-mails and electronic texts but does not require ministerial permission and oversight.

The Scottish Government appears to accept the current democratic oversight may be insufficient. It suggests the scope of the practices used in surveillance may need to be reviewed in the event of Scotland becoming an independent country.

Some may say, however, that this is not good enough – arguing, that if the legislation needs to be reviewed then it should be done now: issues of public accountability, improved oversight and privacy apply regardless of Scotland’s constitutional future.

Privacy, of course, is one of the biggest issues of the day. Electronic and digital communications have opened up channels for people in a way that would have been hard to imagine just a generation ago. Undoubtedly, though, this has been achieved at a price. One of the biggest challenges facing our parliamentarians is to balance the needs of the police and security services with the personal liberties and rights of law-abiding citizens who are entitled to enjoy a private life. Of particular concern is the apparent comfortable relationship that has evolved between the authorities and some of the large telecommunication companies, many of whom are already under intense criticism for being condescending with their customers’ privacy.

Scotland’s Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill MSP, must accept that his task is not only facilitating Police Scotland in their fight against crime, but also involves protecting ordinary citizens in Scotland from undue and unwelcome scrutiny of their private lives by the authorities. Mr MacAskill has remained silent on this issue despite surveillance being a major issue in the current era. The Justice Secretary must speak up and demonstrate that he has this balance right.

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Britain, Government, Intelligence, National Security, Society, Technology, United States

The appearance of the heads of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Services before Parliament…

A WELCOME STEP

Yesterday, the heads of the three intelligence services in Britain – MI5, MI6 and GCHQ – gave evidence in public for the first time before Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC).

Underlying the examination was one of the oldest questions about the nature of state-sponsored surveillance: who monitors and regulates the watchers? An analysis of what was said should glean that we did not learn a great deal that we did not already know. The transparency element, for example, went only so far. They appeared suitably nondescript, too, with faces you would quickly forget in a crowd, a prerequisite for any spymaster.

MI6 chief Sir John Sawers, GCHQ chief Sir Iain Lobban and Andrew Parker, who handles intelligence agents in the UK, deserve some credit for showing up, given their keen professional aversion to public exposure in a political theatre. This should be seen as a welcome step in the right direction if the work of the agencies is to be more open and less susceptible to caricature by conspiracy theorists.

Three developments compelled yesterday’s momentous public appearance. The first is the leaks by the former US national security contractor Edward Snowden which revealed extensive spying by GCHQ and the US National Security Agency. The scope and extent of this surveillance, its modus operandi and authorisation frameworks are matters of high public interest and concern given our historic traditions of personal privacy and public angst over the monitoring activities of government into citizens’ lives.

The second is the revolution wrought by communications technology with subsequent and resultant concerns over data protection. And the third is the sizeable increase to the budget of the security services to combat ‘terrorist’ threats. Balancing the duty to protect the public from dangerous and highly-organised would-be killers with how that objective is achieved by SIS (Security & Intelligence Services) is bound to create conflicts.

For spymasters, whose stock in trade is secrecy, it is perhaps too much for others to expect answers to be given in public about what they do. Such shortcomings soon became apparent during exchanges about the impact of the leaks perpetrated by Mr Snowden. Sir Iain Lobban denounced the way the disclosure of thousands of covert documents had hampered his agency’s efforts to thwart the nation’s enemies. Sir Iain claimed it had put the security effort back many years. In a similar vein, Sir John Sawers insisted our adversaries were ‘rubbing their hands with glee’ as a result. When asked, though, for specific details they retreated behind a cloak of secrecy, saying that to divulge such information would compound the damage.

Because of the synthetic nature of the exercise, the imperfections exposed matters that could not be revealed and which the public would not expect to be told. It is from this point, then, where we have to rely on systems of parliamentary oversight and surveillance protocols to work effectively.

It is indicative that the parliamentary committee for security and intelligence hold the chiefs accountable in private for the allegations they have made and to establish whether their concerns are substantively genuine. The ISC should then report its findings to the public.

The issue of mass surveillance was also raised at a time when it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep an appropriate balance between intrusion and security because communications technology is developing so rapidly. On being asked how legislation setting out their powers can possibly be relevant today when it was last updated 13 years ago, Mr Parker of MI5 said the law was a matter for parliament, not the intelligence chiefs. They also punctured the notion that simply because something is secret does not mean it is also sinister.

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