Tag Archives: GCHQ

Britain, Intelligence, National Security, United States

Britain’s Spy watchdog rules on GCHQ eavesdropping…

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.

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Britain, Government, Intelligence, National Security, United States

US spying programmes are being used by British spies to snoop on UK email accounts…

COVERT INTELLIGENCE GATHERING ON UK CITIZENS

British spies and intelligence agents have had access to a US government programme that monitors the web activity of millions of Britons.

Secret documents published suggest the US National Security Agency (NSA) has direct access to data held by internet giants including Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, YouTube, Skype and Apple.

The documents – which appear to be slides from a training presentation for intelligence agents – suggest the agency can access email, photographs, social network information, chat records and other ‘stored data’ held by the companies, as part of its ‘Prism’ project.

They also suggest that the British government’s listening centre, GCHQ, has had access to the system since at least June 2010. During this period the project generated nearly 200 intelligence reports. It is unclear whether other agencies, such as MI5 and MI6, were also involved, meaning the true extent of the snooping could be higher.

A spokesperson for GCHQ said:

… We do not comment on intelligence matters… (but) our work is carried out in accordance with strict legal and policy framework.

Privacy campaigners warned that the revelations suggested the creation of a ‘Snooper’s Charter by the back door’. They come after a proposed plan to pay internet companies to collate user data from UK computers was dropped only last month in face of opposition from Conservative backbenchers and Liberal Democrats.

Labour has called on David Cameron to come clean to MPs on the extent of Britain’s role. Yvette Cooper MP, Shadow Home Secretary, said:

… In light of these reports, the Prime Minster should brief the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) on what ministers know and should ask the ISC to report on the UK’s relationship with the Prism programme, the nature of intelligence being gathered, the extent of UK oversight by ministers and others, and the level of safeguards and compliance with the law.

The Guardian, a London based newspaper, said it has obtained slides from a whistleblowing intelligence officer worried about invasions of privacy.

Reports by the newspaper and The Washington Post suggested the FBI and the NSA can tap directly into the central servers of nine leading internet companies.

But a number of them, including Google, Apple, Yahoo and Facebook denied that the government had “direct access” to their servers.

Microsoft said it does not voluntarily participate in any government data collection and only complies ‘with orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers’.

Yet one slide appears to be a timeline of when the companies began to participate in Prism, starting with Microsoft in September 2007 and ending with Apple in October 2012.

According to the reports, Prism was established under President George W Bush in 2007 and has grown ‘exponentially’ under President Obama.

The Director of US National Intelligence said that the law ensures that only ‘non-US persons outside the US are targeted’, raising the likelihood that Britons are among those captured in its net.

Revelations about the snooping programme follow separate reports about the NSA being allowed to collect all telephone user data from Verizon, one of the largest telephone firms in the US, for three months.

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