Tag Archives: GCHQ

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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Government, Intelligence, National Security, Society, Technology

Britain’s security and intelligence services: Responsibility not just power

SECURITY SERVICES

Intro: Given the extent of their reach and a recent parliamentary report into their activities an operational realignment is called for

Our security and intelligence agencies face greater challenges today than ever before. Advanced and sophisticated technology has become commonplace, and the world strains to keep up or nearly buckles under the weight of our digital communications. Monitoring the activities of terrorists, criminals and other malign forces have become difficult to spot because of the subversive methods they use in defying detection.

Bodies such as GCHQ, though, are hardly mere victims of the electronic advance. You may often hear security chiefs talking about their desperate searches for needles in haystacks, but the fact is they have an impressive operational capacity to cut through a lot of the chaff in order to find what they seek.

The Security and Intelligence Services (SIS) ability to obtain and examine vast swathes of raw data and processed information has been furiously debated ever since the revelations of Edward Snowden, the US fugitive, about how the British agency received data relating to UK citizens from America’s National Security Agency up to 2014 – a practice which was branded unlawful by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal. Notwithstanding, there will always be a divergence of views between those who place primacy on GCHQ doing anything in its power to maintain public safety, and those who feel unease at the prospect of innocent people being subjected to continued intrusion.

Earlier this month a report on these matters by Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee was a notable intervention. The committee members, like many of their peers across other government departments, believe that the bulk collection of data by GCHQ is legitimate and does not amount to unjustified, Orwellian surveillance. But they do appear to accept that the current legislation, which sets the parameters for such activities, is overly complex and lacks transparency. The legislation may have political oversight in regulating the activities of SIS, but its lack of public transparency and accountability was summed up well by the committee’s description of the existing legal framework. Intelligence agencies, they said, were being provided with a ‘blank cheque to carry out whatever activities they deem necessary’. In essence that is a damning indictment on the legislation that governs the work of our intelligence agencies. The committee has called for a new, single piece of legislation to replace and clarify current statutes as a matter of priority by the next government.

The discovery that a handful of intelligence officers have misused surveillance powers and have subsequently been disciplined by their superiors should also be of concern. The committee may speak reassuringly about the number of wrongdoers being in ‘very small single figures’ but the disclosure will hardly boost public confidence in the integrity of Britain’s security personnel. The recommendations of the committee are right, therefore, to suggest that the next government should consider criminalising such improper use of surveillance techniques.

Despite these positive proposals, there is nevertheless something troublingly simplistic about the committee’s top-line conclusion about GCHQ’s bulk interception capability. It says soothingly: ‘GCHQ are not reading the emails of everyone in the UK’. Whilst it is true that thousands of emails are read by security analysts every day, and that there remains a feeling that individual privacy of citizens comes a poor second to other considerations, few would have suggested otherwise against GCHQ’s simple assertion. That may be comforting for some, but surveillance does have the ability to antagonise as well as protect.

At a time when threats to this country are at a pitch not previously seen Britain’s security and intelligence agencies have a difficult job in tracking and monitoring those who wish to do us harm. But it must not be forgotten that the powers invested at their disposal are immense and more than proportionate for which they are needed. Simply asking that they be used responsibly is surely reason enough to help appease those who clamber to an argument of unnecessary state intrusion into many innocent people’s lives. Such a request stems from a belief that the glue which binds British society is primarily the combined force of its liberal values, not one that erodes it through a heavy-booted security capability.

 

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Britain, Foreign Affairs, Government, Intelligence, Military, National Security, Politics, Society, United States

Reconfiguring Defence for reasons of a changed world…

DEFENCE & FUTURE OVERSEAS PARTNERSHIPS

Over the course of the last half-century defence spending has attracted and been a hot issue of contention. This has been brought to the fore in recent times, through government rounds of budget and expenditure reductions. Most notably, the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review and the cuts to overall manning levels to the armed services have brought the issue into sharp focus. Critics argue this has seriously skewed our defence posture and capability towards mammoth (and massively expensive) commitments such as upgrading and maintaining Trident and the development of new aircraft carriers.

Last month, former US defence secretary, Robert Gates, asserted that defence cuts in Britain have left the UK unable to be a ‘full partner’ in future military operations with the United States. As a result of defence cuts, Mr Gates believes that the UK no longer has ‘full-spectrum capabilities’. This, he says, will affect the UK’s ability to be a full partner and will change the dynamics of how operations are conducted in the future. His comments came in the wake of remarks by General Sir Nicholas Houghton, the Chief of the Defence Staff, who said that manpower is increasingly being perceived as an ‘overhead’ and that Britain’s defence capabilities have been ‘hollowed out’.

It is right that these cuts have been questioned in the UK. The concerns over the knock-on direct and indirect effects on local economies, and the dangers of global military over-stretch, have been well aired. At the same time, however, many have long queried the need for such a large and over-bloated defence budget, particularly when our appetite for overseas engagements in the wake of Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts has greatly diminished.

The world has changed, too. Britain is certainly not the global power she once was. There is perhaps room for debate on the reasons for this relative decline, but some truths are incontrovertible. The growing focus of global power and wealth from West to East, the profound change in the nature and structure of armed conflict and the threats that we face to our national security are all factors that must enter the equation if we are to explain and account for how the world has changed and how, as a consequence, our influence has declined. Our reduced military capabilities reflect in large part the need to bear down and address our massive budget deficit and public debt. Such considerations have, as Gates himself stated, also forced spending reductions in the US.

But what is also true is that Britain is less committed in performing the role of being an acquiescent subordinate to the United States in international affairs. Widespread disquiet has also stemmed from the ubiquitous relationship that US intelligence has with Britain’s intelligence services and the close links that have existed between America’s National Security Agency (NSA) and Britain’s communications and listening posts at GCHQ in Cheltenham. In light of these considerations, it is only right and proper that the UK’s military relationship with the US be subject to re-examination.

Public ambivalence is not likely to stop there, either. It should also lead in due course to a more searching examination of Britain’s future commitment to Trident and what justifications there are in keeping a nuclear deterrent. Particularly so, given the changing political landscape in the UK and the very real prospect of Scotland (where Trident and the nuclear deterrent is housed against its will) becoming an independent nation. The referendum for Scottish independence is to be held this year in September.

It may be tempting to compare our defence capacity with what the country was able to sustain in the past and no-doubt some will rue Britain’s reduced capabilities. But the fact remains that the world has changed and with it the shifting balance of global power. It is to the future, not the past, which we should now look in how our overseas partnerships are formed. Britain’s defence arrangements will become a reflection of these changed requirements.

 

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