GCHQ use of Prism surveillance data was legal, say MPs

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23341597

by jgrahamc • 13 years ago

50 35 13 years ago

bbc.co.uk

rlpb• 13 years ago

Whether what the Government did was legal or not is not particularly relevant here, since the Government wrote the law, and in this case are even interpreting it.

What matters is whether citizens support what the Government did, and whether citizens think that what they did should or should not be legal.

I wish the media would spend more time focusing on the latter.

disputin• 13 years ago

Exactly. Responding to a complaint that was never made. Straw man.

cmdkeen5• 13 years ago

What's different in the UK case is that a senior politician has to put their name to specific actions and requests. So when a whistleblower, court case or general finding out happens there is a head ready to go on the block.

When whistleblowers have come forward with specific things (bugging the UN is a memorable one) the public response has tended to be significantly more accepting than the whistleblower expected. Bugging foreigners is generally seen as plucky secret agents at it again over here.

This report didn't just say it was legal - it explained the (rough) process for obtaining the data. Warrants for requests, with requests based on specific selectors relating to ongoing investigations sounds like exactly what the citizenry does want.

mtgx• 13 years ago

What selectors? They are given right for blanket surveillance:

"Under a little known clause in the Ripa statute, GCHQ is permitted to collect vast amounts of data under a single warrant or a special certificate issued by the foreign secretary."

Do you find that "normal" or something you can support? A single warrant to collect everything? Why even bother with warrants then? What both US and UK are doing is the bare minimum of legal paperwork to allow them to have a surveillance state, and when they get caught, they can say stuff like this in the media, and hope the public buys it. It's not even close to trying to respect the spirit of the law or of the constitution, or human rights.

But Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said: "The painfully careful words of the ICS's report clear absolutely nothing up. There's nothing to allay fears that industrial amounts of personal data are being shared under the Intelligence Services Act and concerns that all UK citizens are subject to blanket surveillance under GCHQ's Tempora programme aren't even mentioned. This spin-cycle is marked 'whitewash'."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/17/prism-nsa-gchq-r...

I would avoid stories on this from BBC. From what I've noticed they tend be on their side, and won't report everything or make it sound as if what they're doing is okay.

jumblesale• 13 years ago

It's ok because it's legal. It's legal because we've made laws allowing it. I hope they find time soon to get round to addressing if it's ethical, or if the people want it.

tome3• 13 years ago

That gets to the root of it all I think. There's no way of telling whether its ethical or if the people want it if no one except the Intelligence and Security Committee knows what is going on.

cmdkeen5• 13 years ago

Given they need warrants* for each interception it's pretty clear they aren't blanket bringing back all UK records, just the ones they ask for based on specific criteria.

So yes, I don't mind that at all. That seems like exactly how the system should work.

* Though intelligence warrants work a little differently in the UK

acqq3• 13 years ago

They actually intercept everything and store everything according to how Tempora is described here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/21/gchq-cables-secret-...

Tempora is described as storing absolutely all packets traversing given points for fixed number of days.

This claim "we have individual orders" is just based on the interpretation that "before you start the court procedure against somebody it's not intercepting" so of course under that premise, they have warrants. So they collect everything, store everything and they simply don't name that "intercepting and collecting."

The simple question for them is "is there a Tempora project, is it active and how many individual records are in the databases in that project and how many internet packets are on the storage at once?" -- Just an order of magnitude (the exponent of 10) of the packets is enough. If you have a millions of billions packets stored, it's certainly not from any small number of "targets."

grey-area2• 13 years ago

Given they need warrants for each interception it's pretty clear they aren't blanket bringing back all UK records,

They shouldn't be intercepting data without a warrant. They are intercepting everything and then deciding what they think is important or justified. That's illegal and needs to stop.

sentenza2• 13 years ago

They say that GCHQ conforms with its statutory duties. Wasn't one of the statutory duties of GCHQ also industrial espionage? [1]

So the mainstream political establishment of the UK confirms that they are OK with having an intelligence agency that scrapes all available internet traffic in order to steal trade secrets from continental European companies.

As a continental European I must ask: Why is the UK so insistent that the EU is really about free trade when, at the same time, they are waging a covert trade war against us?

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/defence-and-security-blog/2013/...

tome3• 13 years ago

Your outrage is valid, but your presumption of self-innocence I think probably not. I don't know which european country you are from, but most likely it tried or is trying to have a similar program.

mercurial• 13 years ago

France appears that we do have a similar program. I don't know if it trawls for trade secrets as well, but I wouldn't be surprised. Ugh. Also, Sweden.

sentenza2• 13 years ago

I'm from Germany and I am of course not certain of German self-innocence. However, I would still be surprised if our intelligence agencies were involved in industrial espionage against companies in other EU countries. There are two reasons for this:

If such a thing were to become public, the backlash would be enormous. The German political establishment, from the Bundestag down to village mayors, and also a large part (most likely the majority) of the population are quite invested in European unification. Having had bad experiences in the past, most people here would like to get on with their lives without having to worry about the dealings of nation-states. Such hostile acts against other EU countries would be presumed foolish and dangerous.

The second and probably more important reason is that the German intelligence agencies are not completely under German control. This is something we carry around with us since the postwar occupation. Recently declassified secret contracts specify that the German intelligence agencies have to work in close collaboration (and sometimes on the orders of) the intelligence agencies of the Western Allies. I'd be surprised if the French would let our agencies engage in industrial espionage.

EDIT: Btw, I am aware of the traffic scraping that the BND does, I just assume that industrial espionage, at this point in time , is not one of the many (probably mostly nefarious) things they do with that data.

cmdkeen5• 13 years ago

Read up on some of the literature published a decade or so ago. Industrial espionage and economic espionage (more so) were the big things in the 1990s because we had all this intelligence apparatus left over from the Cold War with no idea what to do with it. The biggest risks to developed countries actually did seem to be economic (remember the power of the Deutsch mark back in the day).

After 9/11 and the subsequent London bombings the security agencies found their new targets and funding sources, they didn't need to cast around to find justifications to still exist.

Short of actual estimates of how much economic or industrial espionage is going on outwith military equipment or massive economic indicators (EU bailout discussions) I'd be amazed if much was being done.

GCHQ, SIS and MI5 do not have unlimited budgets and massive staffs to throw at every problem.

jgrahamc2• 13 years ago

The most interesting statement to me in the ISC report is the following:

  Further, in each case where GCHQ sought information from the US, 
  a warrant for interception, signed by a Minister, was already in
  place, in accordance with the legal safeguards contained in the 
  Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.

Now, unless there's something odd in RIPA giving blanket permission then this sounds like individual warrants obtained prior to any interception.

cmdkeen5• 13 years ago

I think it depends what these "selectors" they used to query on were. If a warrant read: "all communications where a participant is based in the UK" signed A Minister

Then we'd have a problem. The example given is based on email addresses - which seems perfectly sensible.

andy_ppp• 13 years ago

Funny how the BBC have turned off comments on this story isn't it!

alan_cx2• 13 years ago

Even as a "fundamentalist" BBC supporter, I have to say I find the BBC's decisions about what stories have and don't have comments allowed very strange.

Although, I do think the BBC still feels under pressure from government. I imagine that at times they are walking on egg shells.

phpnode2• 13 years ago

it's nothing to do with government pressure, it's simply an issue of resources.

The BBC has huge traffic and is required by law to moderate its comment pages. Some subjects (like this one, or anything to do with Paedophiles, Religion, War etc) will trigger an enormous volume of comments. It's simply not possible for the BBC to moderate them all, so they have to make the difficult decision to turn the comments off.

harrytuttle• 13 years ago

Not really - this is normal for them if someone might actually be critical of the reporting.

The BBC have their own set of agendas and biases just like any other broadcaster or publisher.

People just seem to illogically shrug it off with the meme of "the BBC is not biased" which is the result of a marketing campaign that has been running since they were formed.

Not some tinfoil hat paranoia nutjob site btw: http://biasedbbc.org/

phaemon• 13 years ago

Not some tinfoil hat paranoia nutjob site btw: http://biasedbbc.org/

Oh yes it is! First story: "Seems to me that those working on Today have an issue with Israel, since on no basis can it be said to have “questionable” human rights issues."

From the very report this story is about: "The human rights situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPTs) continued to be of concern to the UK in 2012. Much of this stemmed from Israel’s occupation of the OPTs and actions taken by the Israeli government in contravention of international humanitarian law and international human rights law."

acqq3• 13 years ago

The whole thing is just a spin. They actually intercept everything and store everything according to the description of Tempora here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/21/gchq-cables-secret-...

It looks that the idea is the same as in US. Once they introduce the interpretation that "before you start a court procedure against somebody it's not intercepting" then of course under that premise, they have warrants. Their idea is that "all data intercepted, collected and stored is still just as nothing before we decide to use it. Only then we call that an intercept."

See my other post here for the right question to ask. Ask about number of packets that are in the storage at once, or how many packets contribute to the data in the storage. From how many different users from UK and the rest of the world. The answer is, according to Guardian, "from exactly all users from both UK and the rest of the world." It's an impressive technological feat. It certainly doesn't sound like "nothing."

jgrahamc2• 13 years ago

Funny how the ISC report is hosted on Google Sites and so if you download it while logged in your Google account is likely associated with it.

In fact, the entire ISC site is on Google Sites: https://sites.google.com/a/independent.gov.uk/isc/home

grey-area2• 13 years ago

It also examined a list of 'selectors' (such as email addresses) that requested information on a list of UK nationals or individuals who were under surveillance in such operations.

This is of course misleading as it only talks about one process - using PRISM access to US providers from the sound of it. The entire UK is under surveillance under Tempora, and I don't trust our politicians or GCHQ not to abuse this information in the short-term let alone in the long term. The BBC doesn't have very good coverage of this issue unfortunately.

While the committee found that GCHQ had acted within the law,

In what way is collecting the information of every UK citizen and passing it to the NSA on demand within the law?

I see daily evidence of the integrity and high standards of the men and women of GCHQ. The ISC's findings are further testament to their professionalism and values.

For a very good example of why we should be suspicious of the platitudes of politicians and the security services about integrity, see the family of Stephen Lawrence - their son was killed in the street in a racist attack, and then the police used spies to follow the family and gathered intelligence on them, just because they demanded a better investigation of the murder.

Another example is Katherine Gun, the GCHQ whistleblower, who revealed that GCHQ was processing requests from the NSA to tap the telephones of UN security council delegates in the lead up to the Iraq war. She was hounded out of her job, prosecuted for whistleblowing, and finally all charges dropped after 8 months.

dspillett• 13 years ago

UK.gov: "We most definitely did not have access to that information, ever, but when we did it was perfectly legal."

GCHQ use of Prism surveillance data was legal, say MPs

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