William Hague has hailed GCHQ’s ‘democratic accountability’, but legislation drafted before a huge expansion of internet traffic appears to offer flexibility

GCHQ – the government’s communications headquarters. Does it have the strongest checks and balances in the world? Photograph: Reuters

William Hague was adamant when he addressed MPs on Monday last week. In an emergency statement (video) forced by the Guardian’s disclosures about GCHQ involvement with the Prism programme, the foreign secretary insisted the agency operated within a “strong framework of democratic accountability and oversight”.

The laws governing the intelligence agencies provide “the strongest systems of checks and balances for secret intelligence anywhere in the world”, he said.

Leaked documents seen by the Guardian give the impression some high-ranking officials at GCHQ have a different view.

In confidential briefings, one of Cheltenham’s senior legal advisers, whom the Guardian will not name, made a note to tell his guests: “We have a light oversight regime compared with the US”.

The parliamentary intelligence and security committee, which scrutinises the work of the agencies, was sympathetic to the agencies’ difficulties, he suggested.

“They have always been exceptionally good at understanding the need to keep our work secret,” the legal adviser said.

Complaints against the agencies, undertaken by the interception commissioner, are conducted under “the veil of secrecy”. And the investigatory powers tribunal, which assesses complaints against the agencies, has “so far always found in our favour”.

The briefings offer important glimpses into the GCHQ’s view of itself, the legal framework in which it works, and, it would seem, the necessity for reassuring the UK’s most important intelligence partner, the United States, that sensitive information can be shared without raising anxiety in Washington.

None of the documents advocates law-breaking – quite the opposite. But critics will say they highlight the limitations of the three pieces of legislation that underpin the activities of GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 – which were repeatedly mentioned by Hague as pillars of the regulatory and oversight regime during his statement to the Commons.

The foreign secretary said GCHQ “complied fully” with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa), the Human Rights Act (HRA) and the Intelligence Services Act (Isa).

Privacy campaigners argue the laws have one important thing in common: they were drafted in the last century, and nobody involved in writing them, or passing them, could possibly have envisaged the exponential growth of traffic from telecoms and internet service providers over the past decade.

Nor could they have imagined that GCHQ could have found a way of storing and analysing so much of that information as part of its overarching Mastering the Internet project.

The Tempora programme appears to have given Britain’s spymasters that resource, with documents seen by the Guardian showing Britain can retain for up to 30 days an astronomical amount of unfiltered data garnered from cables carrying internet traffic.

This raises a number of questions about the way GCHQ officials and ministers have legitimised the programme.

The briefings, which are entitled UK Operational Legalities, stress that GCHQ “is an organisation with a highly responsible approach to compliance with the law”.

GCHQ also has a well staffed legal team, known as OPP-LEG, to help staff navigate their way through the complexities of the law.

But there appears to be some nervousness about Tempora. In a paper written for National Security Agency (NSA) analysts entitled A Guide to Using Internet Buffers at GCHQ, the author notes: “[Tempora] represents an exciting opportunity to get direct access to enormous amounts of GCHQ’s special source data.

“As large-scale buffering of metadata and content represent a new concept for GCHQ’s exploitation of the internet, GCHQ’s legal and policy officers are understandably taking a careful approach to their access and use.”

So how did GCHQ secure the legal authority for setting up Tempora, and what safeguards are in place for sharing the intelligence with the Americans? According to the documents, the British government used Ripa to get taps on to the fibre-optic cables.

These cables carry internet traffic in and out of the country and contain details of millions of emails and web searches. The information from these cables went straight into the Tempora storage programme.

In one presentation, which appeared to be for US analysts from the NSA, GCHQ explained: “Direct access to large volumes of unselected SSE data [is] collected under a Ripa warrant.”

The precise arrangement between the firms is unclear, as are the legal justifications put before ministers. Isa gives GCHQ some powers for the “passive collection” of data, including from computer networks.

But it appears GCHQ has relied on paragraph four of section 8 of Ripa to gain “external warrants” for its programmes.

They allow the agency to intercept external communications where, for instance, one of the people being targeted is outside Britain.

In most Ripa cases, a minister has to be told the name of an individual or company being targeted before a warrant is granted.

But section 8 permits GCHQ to perform more sweeping and indiscriminate trawls of external data if a minister issues a “certificate” along with the warrant.

According to the documents, the certificate authorises GCHQ to search for material under a number of themes, including: intelligence on the political intentions of foreign governments; military postures of foreign countries; terrorism, international drug trafficking and fraud.

The briefing document says such sweeping certificates, which have to be signed off by a minister, “cover the entire range of GCHQ’s intelligence production”.

“The certificate is issued with the warrant and signed by the secretary of state and sets out [the] class of work we can do under it … cannot list numbers or individuals as this would be an infinite list which we couldn’t manage.”

Lawyers at GCHQ speak of having 10 basic certificates, including a “global” one that covers the agency’s support station at Bude in Cornwall, Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire, and Cyprus.

Other certificates have been used for “special source accesses” – a reference, perhaps, to the cables carrying web traffic. All certificates have to be renewed by the foreign secretary every six months.

A source with knowledge of intelligence confirmed: “Overall exercise of collection and analysis [is] done under a broad, overall legal authority which has to be renewed at intervals, and is signed off at a senior political level.”

The source said the interception commissioner was able to “conclude that [the process] was not appropriate”, and that the companies involved were not giving up the information voluntarily.

“We have overriding authority to compel [them] to do this,” the source said. “There’s an overarching condition of the licensing of the companies that they have to co-operate in this.

“Should they decline, we can compel them to do so. They have no choice. They can’t talk about the warrant, they can’t reveal the existence of it.”

GCHQ says it can also seek a sensitive targeting authority (STA), which allows it snoop on any Briton “anywhere in the world” or any foreign national located in the UK.

It is unclear how the STA system works, and who has authority over it.

The intelligence agencies also have to take note of the HRA, which demands any interception is “necessary and proportionate”.

But the documents show GCHQ believes these terms are open to interpretation – which “creates flexibility”. When Tempora became fully functional in around 2011, GCHQ gave the NSA access to the programme on a three-month trial – and the NSA was keen to impress.

The US agency sent a briefing to some of its analysts urging them to show they could behave responsibly with the data. Under a heading – “The need to be successful!” – the author wrote: “As the first NSA users to receive operational access [to Tempora], we’re depending on you to provide the business case required to justify expanded access. Most importantly we need to prove that NSA users can utilise the internet buffers in ways that are consistent with GCHQ’s legal and policy rules.

“In addition, we need to prove that NSA’s access … is necessary to prosecute our mission and will greatly enhance the production of the intelligence … success of this three-month trial will determine expanded NSA access to internet buffers in the future.”

The NSA appears to have made a successful case. In May last year, an internal GCHQ memo said it had 300 analysts working on intelligence from Tempora, and the NSA had 250. The teams were supporting “the target discovery mission”.

But the safeguards for the sharing of this information are unclear.

Though GCHQ says it only keeps the content of messages for three working days, and the metadata for up to 30 days, privacy campaigners here and in the US will want to know if the NSA is adhering to the same self-imposed rules. One concern for privacy campaigners is that GCHQ and the NSA could conduct intercepts for each other, and then offer to share the information – a manoeuvre that could bypass the domestic rules they have to abide by.

This was raised by MPs during last week’s statement, with the former Labour home secretary David Blunkett calling for clarification on this potential loophole.

Last week, the Guardian sent a series of questions to the Foreign Office about this issue, but the department said it would not be drawn on it.

“It is a longstanding policy not to comment on intelligence matters; this includes our intelligence co-operation with the United States.

“The intelligence and security committee is looking into this, which is the proper channel for such matters.”

Ewen MacAskill, Julian Borger, Nick Hopkins, Nick Davies and James Ball
The Guardian, Friday 21 June 2013 17.23 BST

Find this story at 21 June 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Fisa court submissions show broad scope of procedures governing NSA’s surveillance of Americans’ communication

• Document one: procedures used by NSA to target non-US persons
• Document two: procedures used by NSA to minimise data collected from US persons

The documents show that discretion as to who is actually targeted lies directly with the NSA’s analysts. Photograph: Martin Rogers/Workbook Stock/Getty

Top secret documents submitted to the court that oversees surveillance by US intelligence agencies show the judges have signed off on broad orders which allow the NSA to make use of information “inadvertently” collected from domestic US communications without a warrant.

The Guardian is publishing in full two documents submitted to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (known as the Fisa court), signed by Attorney General Eric Holder and stamped 29 July 2009. They detail the procedures the NSA is required to follow to target “non-US persons” under its foreign intelligence powers and what the agency does to minimize data collected on US citizens and residents in the course of that surveillance.

The documents show that even under authorities governing the collection of foreign intelligence from foreign targets, US communications can still be collected, retained and used.

The procedures cover only part of the NSA’s surveillance of domestic US communications. The bulk collection of domestic call records, as first revealed by the Guardian earlier this month, takes place under rolling court orders issued on the basis of a legal interpretation of a different authority, section 215 of the Patriot Act.

The Fisa court’s oversight role has been referenced many times by Barack Obama and senior intelligence officials as they have sought to reassure the public about surveillance, but the procedures approved by the court have never before been publicly disclosed.

The top secret documents published today detail the circumstances in which data collected on US persons under the foreign intelligence authority must be destroyed, extensive steps analysts must take to try to check targets are outside the US, and reveals how US call records are used to help remove US citizens and residents from data collection.

However, alongside those provisions, the Fisa court-approved policies allow the NSA to:

• Keep data that could potentially contain details of US persons for up to five years;

• Retain and make use of “inadvertently acquired” domestic communications if they contain usable intelligence, information on criminal activity, threat of harm to people or property, are encrypted, or are believed to contain any information relevant to cybersecurity;

• Preserve “foreign intelligence information” contained within attorney-client communications;

• Access the content of communications gathered from “U.S. based machine[s]” or phone numbers in order to establish if targets are located in the US, for the purposes of ceasing further surveillance.

The broad scope of the court orders, and the nature of the procedures set out in the documents, appear to clash with assurances from President Obama and senior intelligence officials that the NSA could not access Americans’ call or email information without warrants.

The documents also show that discretion as to who is actually targeted under the NSA’s foreign surveillance powers lies directly with its own analysts, without recourse to courts or superiors – though a percentage of targeting decisions are reviewed by internal audit teams on a regular basis.

Since the Guardian first revealed the extent of the NSA’s collection of US communications, there have been repeated calls for the legal basis of the programs to be released. On Thursday, two US congressmen introduced a bill compelling the Obama administration to declassify the secret legal justifications for NSA surveillance.

The disclosure bill, sponsored by Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, and Todd Rokita, an Indiana Republican, is a complement to one proposed in the Senate last week. It would “increase the transparency of the Fisa Court and the state of the law in this area,” Schiff told the Guardian. “It would give the public a better understanding of the safeguards, as well as the scope of these programs.”

Section 702 of the Fisa Amendments Act (FAA), which was renewed for five years last December, is the authority under which the NSA is allowed to collect large-scale data, including foreign communications and also communications between the US and other countries, provided the target is overseas.

FAA warrants are issued by the Fisa court for up to 12 months at a time, and authorise the collection of bulk information – some of which can include communications of US citizens, or people inside the US. To intentionally target either of those groups requires an individual warrant.
One-paragraph order

One such warrant seen by the Guardian shows that they do not contain detailed legal rulings or explanation. Instead, the one-paragraph order, signed by a Fisa court judge in 2010, declares that the procedures submitted by the attorney general on behalf of the NSA are consistent with US law and the fourth amendment.

Those procedures state that the “NSA determines whether a person is a non-United States person reasonably believed to be outside the United States in light of the totality of the circumstances based on the information available with respect to that person, including information concerning the communications facility or facilities used by that person”.

It includes information that the NSA analyst uses to make this determination – including IP addresses, statements made by the potential target, and other information in the NSA databases, which can include public information and data collected by other agencies.

Where the NSA has no specific information on a person’s location, analysts are free to presume they are overseas, the document continues.

“In the absence of specific information regarding whether a target is a United States person,” it states “a person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States or whose location is not known will be presumed to be a non-United States person unless such person can be positively identified as a United States person.”

If it later appears that a target is in fact located in the US, analysts are permitted to look at the content of messages, or listen to phone calls, to establish if this is indeed the case.

Referring to steps taken to prevent intentional collection of telephone content of those inside the US, the document states: “NSA analysts may analyze content for indications that a foreign target has entered or intends to enter the United States. Such content analysis will be conducted according to analytic and intelligence requirements and priorities.”

Details set out in the “minimization procedures”, regularly referred to in House and Senate hearings, as well as public statements in recent weeks, also raise questions as to the extent of monitoring of US citizens and residents.

NSA minimization procedures signed by Holder in 2009 set out that once a target is confirmed to be within the US, interception must stop immediately. However, these circumstances do not apply to large-scale data where the NSA claims it is unable to filter US communications from non-US ones.

The NSA is empowered to retain data for up to five years and the policy states “communications which may be retained include electronic communications acquired because of limitations on the NSA’s ability to filter communications”.

Even if upon examination a communication is found to be domestic – entirely within the US – the NSA can appeal to its director to keep what it has found if it contains “significant foreign intelligence information”, “evidence of a crime”, “technical data base information” (such as encrypted communications), or “information pertaining to a threat of serious harm to life or property”.

Domestic communications containing none of the above must be destroyed. Communications in which one party was outside the US, but the other is a US-person, are permitted for retention under FAA rules.

The minimization procedure adds that these can be disseminated to other agencies or friendly governments if the US person is anonymised, or including the US person’s identity under certain criteria.
Holder’s ‘minimization procedure’ says once a target is confirmed to be in the US, interception of communication must stop. Photo: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images

A separate section of the same document notes that as soon as any intercepted communications are determined to have been between someone under US criminal indictment and their attorney, surveillance must stop. However, the material collected can be retained, if it is useful, though in a segregated database:

“The relevant portion of the communication containing that conversation will be segregated and the National Security Division of the Department of Justice will be notified so that appropriate procedures may be established to protect such communications from review or use in any criminal prosecution, while preserving foreign intelligence information contained therein,” the document states.

In practice, much of the decision-making appears to lie with NSA analysts, rather than the Fisa court or senior officials.

A transcript of a 2008 briefing on FAA from the NSA’s general counsel sets out how much discretion NSA analysts possess when it comes to the specifics of targeting, and making decisions on who they believe is a non-US person. Referring to a situation where there has been a suggestion a target is within the US.

“Once again, the standard here is a reasonable belief that your target is outside the United States. What does that mean when you get information that might lead you to believe the contrary? It means you can’t ignore it. You can’t turn a blind eye to somebody saying: ‘Hey, I think so and so is in the United States.’ You can’t ignore that. Does it mean you have to completely turn off collection the minute you hear that? No, it means you have to do some sort of investigation: ‘Is that guy right? Is my target here?” he says.

“But, if everything else you have says ‘no’ (he talked yesterday, I saw him on TV yesterday, even, depending on the target, he was in Baghdad) you can still continue targeting but you have to keep that in mind. You can’t put it aside. You have to investigate it and, once again, with that new information in mind, what is your reasonable belief about your target’s location?”

The broad nature of the court’s oversight role, and the discretion given to NSA analysts, sheds light on responses from the administration and internet companies to the Guardian’s disclosure of the PRISM program. They have stated that the content of online communications is turned over to the NSA only pursuant to a court order. But except when a US citizen is specifically targeted, the court orders used by the NSA to obtain that information as part of Prism are these general FAA orders, not individualized warrants specific to any individual.

Once armed with these general orders, the NSA is empowered to compel telephone and internet companies to turn over to it the communications of any individual identified by the NSA. The Fisa court plays no role in the selection of those individuals, nor does it monitor who is selected by the NSA.

The NSA’s ability to collect and retain the communications of people in the US, even without a warrant, has fuelled congressional demands for an estimate of how many Americans have been caught up in surveillance.

Two US senators, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall – both members of the Senate intelligence committee – have been seeking this information since 2011, but senior White House and intelligence officials have repeatedly insisted that the agency is unable to gather such statistics.

Glenn Greenwald and James Ball
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 20 June 2013 23.59 BST

Find this story at 20 June 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

WASHINGTON — When Max Kelly, the chief security officer for Facebook, left the social media company in 2010, he did not go to Google, Twitter or a similar Silicon Valley concern. Instead the man who was responsible for protecting the personal information of Facebook’s more than one billion users from outside attacks went to work for another giant institution that manages and analyzes large pools of data: the National Security Agency.

Mr. Kelly’s move to the spy agency, which has not previously been reported, underscores the increasingly deep connections between Silicon Valley and the agency and the degree to which they are now in the same business. Both hunt for ways to collect, analyze and exploit large pools of data about millions of Americans.

The only difference is that the N.S.A. does it for intelligence, and Silicon Valley does it to make money.

The disclosure of the spy agency’s program called Prism, which is said to collect the e-mails and other Web activity of foreigners using major Internet companies like Google, Yahoo and Facebook, has prompted the companies to deny that the agency has direct access to their computers, even as they acknowledge complying with secret N.S.A. court orders for specific data.

Yet technology experts and former intelligence officials say the convergence between Silicon Valley and the N.S.A. and the rise of data mining — both as an industry and as a crucial intelligence tool — have created a more complex reality.

Silicon Valley has what the spy agency wants: vast amounts of private data and the most sophisticated software available to analyze it. The agency in turn is one of Silicon Valley’s largest customers for what is known as data analytics, one of the valley’s fastest-growing markets. To get their hands on the latest software technology to manipulate and take advantage of large volumes of data, United States intelligence agencies invest in Silicon Valley start-ups, award classified contracts and recruit technology experts like Mr. Kelly.

“We are all in these Big Data business models,” said Ray Wang, a technology analyst and chief executive of Constellation Research, based in San Francisco. “There are a lot of connections now because the data scientists and the folks who are building these systems have a lot of common interests.”

Although Silicon Valley has sold equipment to the N.S.A. and other intelligence agencies for a generation, the interests of the two began to converge in new ways in the last few years as advances in computer storage technology drastically reduced the costs of storing enormous amounts of data — at the same time that the value of the data for use in consumer marketing began to rise. “These worlds overlap,” said Philipp S. Krüger, chief executive of Explorist, an Internet start-up in New York.

The sums the N.S.A. spends in Silicon Valley are classified, as is the agency’s total budget, which independent analysts say is $8 billion to $10 billion a year.

Despite the companies’ assertions that they cooperate with the agency only when legally compelled, current and former industry officials say the companies sometimes secretly put together teams of in-house experts to find ways to cooperate more completely with the N.S.A. and to make their customers’ information more accessible to the agency. The companies do so, the officials say, because they want to control the process themselves. They are also under subtle but powerful pressure from the N.S.A. to make access easier.

Skype, the Internet-based calling service, began its own secret program, Project Chess, to explore the legal and technical issues in making Skype calls readily available to intelligence agencies and law enforcement officials, according to people briefed on the program who asked not to be named to avoid trouble with the intelligence agencies.

Project Chess, which has never been previously disclosed, was small, limited to fewer than a dozen people inside Skype, and was developed as the company had sometimes contentious talks with the government over legal issues, said one of the people briefed on the project. The project began about five years ago, before most of the company was sold by its parent, eBay, to outside investors in 2009. Microsoft acquired Skype in an $8.5 billion deal that was completed in October 2011.

A Skype executive denied last year in a blog post that recent changes in the way Skype operated were made at the behest of Microsoft to make snooping easier for law enforcement. It appears, however, that Skype figured out how to cooperate with the intelligence community before Microsoft took over the company, according to documents leaked by Edward J. Snowden, a former contractor for the N.S.A. One of the documents about the Prism program made public by Mr. Snowden says Skype joined Prism on Feb. 6, 2011.

Microsoft executives are no longer willing to affirm statements, made by Skype several years ago, that Skype calls could not be wiretapped. Frank X. Shaw, a Microsoft spokesman, declined to comment.

In its recruiting in Silicon Valley, the N.S.A. sends some of its most senior officials to lure the best of the best. No less than Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the agency’s director and the chief of the Pentagon’s Cyber Command, showed up at one of the world’s largest hacker conferences in Las Vegas last summer, looking stiff in an uncharacteristic T-shirt and jeans, to give the keynote speech. His main purpose at Defcon, the conference, was to recruit hackers for his spy agency.

N.S.A. badges are often seen on the lapels of officials at other technology and information security conferences. “They’re very open about their interest in recruiting from the hacker community,” said Jennifer Granick, the director of civil liberties at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society.

But perhaps no one embodies the tightening relationship between the N.S.A. and the valley more than Kenneth A. Minihan.

A career Air Force intelligence officer, Mr. Minihan was the director of the N.S.A. during the Clinton administration until his retirement in the late 1990s, and then he ran the agency’s outside professional networking organization. Today he is managing director of Paladin Capital Group, a venture capital firm based in Washington that in part specializes in financing start-ups that offer high-tech solutions for the N.S.A. and other intelligence agencies. In effect, Mr. Minihan is an advanced scout for the N.S.A. as it tries to capitalize on the latest technology to analyze and exploit the vast amounts of data flowing around the world and inside the United States.

The members of Paladin’s strategic advisory board include Richard C. Schaeffer Jr., a former N.S.A. executive. While Paladin is a private firm, the American intelligence community has its own in-house venture capital company, In-Q-Tel, financed by the Central Intelligence Agency to invest in high-tech start-ups.

Many software technology firms involved in data analytics are open about their connections to intelligence agencies. Gary King, a co-founder and chief scientist at Crimson Hexagon, a start-up in Boston, said in an interview that he had given talks at C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va., about his company’s social media analytics tools.

The future holds the prospect of ever greater cooperation between Silicon Valley and the N.S.A. because data storage is expected to increase at an annual compound rate of 53 percent through 2016, according to the International Data Corporation.

“We reached a tipping point, where the value of having user data rose beyond the cost of storing it,” said Dan Auerbach, a technology analyst with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an electronic privacy group in San Francisco. “Now we have an incentive to keep it forever.”

Social media sites in the meantime are growing as voluntary data mining operations on a scale that rivals or exceeds anything the government could attempt on its own. “You willingly hand over data to Facebook that you would never give voluntarily to the government,” said Bruce Schneier, a technologist and an author.

James Risen reported from Washington, and Nick Wingfield from Seattle. Kitty Bennett contributed reporting.

June 19, 2013
By JAMES RISEN and NICK WINGFIELD

Find this story at 19 June 2013

© 2013 The New York Times Company

Scheme – set up before firm was purchased by Microsoft – allegedly eased access for US law enforcement agencies

Prosecutors in Zhu Yufu’s trial for subversion cited text messages that he sent using Skype. Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images

Skype, the web-based communications company, reportedly set up a secret programme to make it easier for US surveillance agencies to access customers’ information.

The programme, called Project Chess and first revealed by the New York Times on Thursday, was said to have been established before Skype was bought by Microsoft in 2011. Microsoft’s links with US security are under intense scrutiny following the Guardian’s revelation of Prism, a surveillance program run by the National Security Agency (NSA), that claimed “direct” access to its servers and those of rivals including Apple, Facebook and Google.

Project Chess was set up to explore the legal and technical issues involved in making Skype’s communications more readily available to law enforcement and security officials, according to the Times. Only a handful of executives were aware of the plan. The company did not immediately return a call for comment.

Last year Skype denied reports that it had changed its software following the Microsoft acquisition in order to allow law enforcement easier access to communications. “Nothing could be more contrary to the Skype philosophy,” Mark Gillett, vice president of Microsoft’s Skype division, said in a blog post.

According to the Prism documents, Skype had been co-operating with the NSA’s scheme since February 2011, eight months before the software giant took it over. The document gives little detail on the technical nature of that cooperation. Microsoft declined to comment.

The news comes as the tech firms are attempting to distance themselves from the Prism revelations. All the firm’s listed as participating in the Prism scheme have denied that they give the NSA “direct” access to their servers, as claimed by the slide presentation, and said that they only comply with legal requests made through the courts.

But since the story broke a more nuanced picture of how the tech firms work with the surveillance authorities has emerged. The US authorities have become increasingly interested in tech firms and its employees after initially struggling to keep up with the shift to digital communications. NSA officials have held high level talks with executives in the tech firms and are actively recruiting in the tech community.
‘That information is how they make their money’

Shane Harris, author of The Watchers: The Rise of America’s Surveillance State, said the NSA had a crisis in the late 1990s when it realised communication was increasingly digital and it was falling behind in its powers to track that data. “You can not overstate that without this data the NSA would be blind,” he said.

The NSA employs former valley executives, including Max Kelly, the former chief security officer for Facebook, and has increasingly sought to hire people in the hacker community. Former NSA director lieutenant general Kenneth Minihan has taken the opposite tack and is helping create the next generation of tech security firms. Minihan is managing director of Paladin Capital, a private equity firm that has a fund dedicated to investing in homeland security. Paladin also employs Dr Alf Andreassen, a former technical adviser for naval warfare who was also for classified national programmes at AT&T and Bell Laboratories.

Harris said the ties were only likely to deepen as technology moves ever more of our communications on line. He warned the move was likely to present more problems for the tech firms as their consumers worry about their privacy. “It’s been fascinating for me listening to the push back from the tech companies,” said Harris.

Christopher Soghoian, a senior policy analyst studying technological surveillance at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the relationship between the tech giants and the NSA has a fundamental – and ironic – flaw that guarantees the Prism scandal is unlikely to be the last time tensions surface between the two.

The US spying apparatus and Silicon Valley’s top tech firms are basically in the same business, collecting information on people, he said. “It’s a weird symbiotic relationship. It’s not that Facebook and Google are trying to build a surveillance system but they effectively have,” he said. “If they wanted to, Google and Facebook could use technology to tackle the issue, anonymizing and deleting their customers’ information. But that information is how they make their money, so that is never going to happen.”

Dominic Rushe in New York
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 20 June 2013 17.37 BST

Find this story at 20 June 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Skype calls’ immunity to police phone tapping threatened
Suspicious phone conversations on Skype could be targeted for tapping as part of a pan-European crackdown.

Suspicious phone conversations on Skype could be targeted for tapping as part of a pan-European crackdown on what law authorities believe is a massive technical loophole in current wiretapping laws, allowing criminals to communicate without fear of being overheard by the police.

The European investigation could also help U.S. law enforcement authorities gain access to Internet calls. The National Security Agency (NSA) is understood to believe that suspected terrorists use Skype to circumvent detection.

While the police can get a court order to tap a suspect’s land line and mobile phone, it is currently impossible to get a similar order for Internet calls on both sides of the Atlantic.

Skype insisted that it does cooperate with law enforcement authorities, “where legally and technically possible,” the company said in a statement.

“Skype has extensively debriefed Eurojust on our law enforcement program and capabilities,” Skype said.

Eurojust, a European Union agency responsible for coordinating judicial investigations across different jurisdictions announced Friday the opening of an investigation involving all 27 countries of the European Union.

“We will bring investigators from all 27 member states together to find a common approach to this problem,” said Joannes Thuy, a spokesman for Eurojust based in The Hague in the Netherlands.

The purpose of Eurojust’s coordination role is to overcome “the technical and judicial obstacles to the interception of Internet telephony systems”, Eurojust said.

The main judicial obstacles are the differing approaches to data protection in the various E.U. member states, Thuy said.

The investigation is being headed by Eurojust’s Italian representative, Carmen Manfredda.

Criminals in Italy are increasingly making phone calls over the Internet in order to avoid getting caught through mobile phone intercepts, according to Direzione Nazionale Antimafia, the anti-Mafia office in Rome.

Police officers in Milan say organized crime, arms and drugs traffickers, and prostitution rings are turning to Skype and other systems of VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) telephony in order to frustrate investigators.

While telecommunications companies are obliged to comply with court orders to monitor calls on land lines and mobile phones, “Skype’ refuses to cooperate with the authorities,” Thuy said.

In addition to the issue of cooperation, there are technical obstacles to tapping Skype calls. The way calls are set up and carried between computers is proprietary, and the encryption system used is strong. It could be possible to monitor the call on the originating or receiving computer using a specially written program, or perhaps to divert the traffic through a proxy server, but these are all far more difficult than tapping a normal phone. Calls between a PC and a regular telephone via the SkypeIn or SkypeOut service, however, could fall under existing wiretapping regulations and capabilities at the point where they meet the public telephone network.

The pan-European response to the problem may open the door for the U.S. to take similar action, Thuy said.

“We have very good cooperation with the U.S.,” he said, pointing out that a U.S. prosecutor, Marylee Warren, is based in The Hague in order to liaise between U.S. and European judicial authorities.

The NSA (National Security Agency) is so concerned by Skype that it is offering hackers large sums of money to break its encryption, according to unsourced reports in the U.S.

Italian investigators have become increasingly reliant on wiretaps, Eurojust said, giving a recent example of customs and tax police in Milan, who overheard a suspected cocaine trafficker telling an accomplice to switch to Skype in order to get details of a 2kg drug consignment.

“Investigators are convinced that the interception of telephone calls have become an essential tool of the police, who spend millions of euros each year tracking down crime through wiretaps of land lines and mobile phones,” Eurojust said.

The first meeting of Eurojust’s 27 national representatives is planned in the coming weeks but precise details of its timing and the location of the meeting remain secret, Thuy said.

“They will exchange information and then we will give advice on how to proceed,” he said. Bringing Internet telephony into line with calls on land lines and mobile phones “could be the price we have to pay for our security,” he said.

Paul Meller (IDG News Service)
— 23 February, 2009 09:47

Find this story at 23 February 2009

Copyright 2013 IDG Communications

In het voorjaar van 2010 was India een paar weken in de ban van een afluisterschandaal, maar vervolgens verdween dat in de vergetelheid. Dit is opmerkelijk gezien de staat van dienst van de inlichtingenwereld in India. Schandalen die gewone Indiërs raken, maar ook corruptie, slecht management, verkeerde technologie en apparatuur en bovenal incompetentie lijken de boventoon te voeren bij de NTRO, die verantwoordelijk wordt gehouden voor het schandaal. NTRO, National Technical Research Organisation, gebruikt IMSI Catchers om voor lange tijd en op grote schaal politici, ambtenaren, zakenmensen, beroemdheden en gewone Indiërs af te luisteren.

Het gebruik van een IMSI catcher moet nauwlettend gecontroleerd worden. Het afluisterschandaal in India laat zien wat de gevaren zijn van het toelaten van het apparaat in een veiligheidsstelsel. Een IMSI catcher is een mobiele zendmast. Het International Mobile Subscriber Identity nummer is een uniek nummer dat aan een SIM kaart voor een mobiele telefoon is gekoppeld. Aan het IMSI nummer zit tevens een uniek telefoonnummer. Het IMSI nummer bestaat uit drie groepen getallen, 111/22/3333333333. Aan het nummer is te zien uit welk land de SIM kaart komt. De eerste cijfers (111) staan voor het land, Nederland heeft bijvoorbeeld 204 als code. De tweede set cijfers (22) onthullen de provider, KPN heeft bijvoorbeeld 08 en Vodafone 04. De laatste cijfers, maximaal tien cijfers, zijn het unieke abonnementsnummer. Dit is niet hetzelfde als het telefoonnummer. Telefoons waar twee SIM kaarten in zitten, hebben ook twee IMSI nummers.
De IMSI catcher fungeert als mobiele antenne die het gsm verkeer in de buurt opvangt, hierbij gaat het alleen om uitgaande gesprekken. Bij gewone mobiele telefoons vindt de versleuteling van de conversaties plaats in de dichtstbijzijnde mast. De IMSI catcher hoeft de informatie dus niet te kraken, maar kan simpelweg de gesproken of geschreven data lezen. De catcher moet het telefoonverkeer wel doorgeleiden naar een reguliere mast anders kan er geen contact worden gemaakt met de persoon die door de gsm wordt gebeld. De catcher fungeert als tussenstation om de data ofwel direct af te vangen ofwel niet versleuteld door te geleiden. Het doel van de catcher is natuurlijk ook? om het telefoonnummer van een beller te achterhalen. Voor opsporingsinstanties die het gsm nummer van een verdachte niet kunnen traceren is dit een handig middel. Men plaatst een catcher in de buurt van de persoon in kwestie, vangt de nummers allemaal af en kan nagaan welk nummer men moet hebben. Bij politie-invallen kan het apparaat ook zijn dienst bewijzen door op locatie het telefoonverkeer te monitoren, vooral als binnen een onderzoek niet alle gsm-nummers bekend zijn. Tevens kan de catcher worden gebruikt voor spionage doeleinden, vooral spionage die de overheid niet aan de grote klok wil hangen. Bij het afluisteren met een IMSI catcher heeft men namelijk geen medewerking van een Telecom provider nodig. De IMSI catcher laat echter wel een spoor achter die een gebruiker kan wijzen op onregelmatigheden in de transmissie en het apparaat is niet altijd succesvol. De IMSI catcher was tot begin 2011 ook te koop door particulieren. Verschillende bedrijven in New Delhi, Gurgaon en Noida boden de ‘off-the-air-monitoring’ systemen aan. In 2011 besloot de regering de handel van de apparaten aan banden te leggen. Private ondernemingen bleken namelijk gebruik te maken van de catcher.

NTRO
In India is de IMSI Catcher op grote schaal ingezet voor spionage doeleinden, zo onthulde het weekblad Outlook in het voorjaar van 2010. Vanaf waarschijnlijk eind 2006 tot en met april 2010 werden politieke tegenstanders, mensen die promotie zouden maken, leden van het kabinet en allerlei andere politieke en niet politieke figuren door één van de Indiase geheime diensten afgeluisterd. De gesprekken werden afgeluisterd, opgenomen en bewaard. De dienst die verantwoordelijk is voor het afluisteren is de National Technical Research Organisation, de NTRO. De NTRO werd na de Kargil oorlog in 1999 opgezet. Dit conflict ontstond toen het Pakistaanse leger posities in het district Kargil, in de regio Kashmir innam. India reageerde furieus en verdreef de Pakistanen uit een groot deel van Kargil. De laatste posities werden door Pakistan verlaten na diplomatieke druk. De Kargil Review Committee concludeerde in 1999 dat een van de redenen van het uit de hand lopen van het conflict gebrekkige inlichtingen was. De Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) en de National Technical Facilities Organization (NTFO) die al snel NTRO werd gedoopt, werden opgezet.
De NTRO begon zijn werkzaamheden in april 2004. De NTRO is de Indiase stofzuiger van data, zowel internet als telecommunicatie data, en monitort het Indiase grondgebied en luchtruim. De NTRO gebruikt hiervoor allerlei technische hulpmiddelen, van satellieten tot IMSI catchers. De Technology Experiment Satellite (TES), een satelliet die is uitgerust met een camera die foto’s kan maken van voorwerpen van een meter, is een van de hulpmiddelen. De satelliet werd in oktober 2001 gelanceerd en de beelden worden beheerd door de Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). Beelden worden ook commercieel verhandeld door een bedrijf dat verbonden is aan de ISRO, Antrix Corporation. BBC News rapporteerde dat India door TES ook beelden bezit van de oorlog in Afghanistan. In 2001 was India het tweede land naast de Verenigde Staten dat een satelliet bezit die beelden kan genereren van voorwerpen van een meter groot. Een van de functionarissen die centraal staat in de introductie van de afluister praktijken door de NTRO is dhr. Narayanan. Narayanan heeft decennia lang een centrale rol gespeeld in de Indiase inlichtingenwereld. Hij was hoofd van het Intelligence Bureau van 1988 tot 1992, en diende daarbij onder vijf verschillende minister-presidenten. Daarna nam hij een adviserende rol op zich onder de directe verantwoordelijkheid van de minister-president van India. In zijn rol als National Security Advisor (NSA) introduceerde hij de nieuwe afluistertechnologie in India in 2005. Narayanan wordt wel de ‘super spook’ van India genoemd, omdat hij zijn gehele wat? leven? al in de kringen van de Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), het Intelligence Bureau en de NSA heeft bewogen. Zijn verhouding met minister-president Manmohan Singh was toen hij National Security Advisor niet close. Hij had bezwaren tegen de nucleaire samenwerking tussen Amerika en India en de toenadering van India en Pakistan. In de Wikileaks Cables over India die begin 2011 zijn vrijgegeven door The Hindu wordt Narayanan echter wel omschreven als een belangenbehartiger van de relatie met de Verenigde Staten. In een van de berichten wordt hij omschreven als de smeerolie voor zaken die voor de Amerikanen interessant zijn.
De NTRO valt onder de verantwoordelijkheid van de inlichtingendienst buitenland van India, de Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), hoewel het een zekere mate van onafhankelijkheid heeft. De NTRO faciliteit waar het afluisteren van de communicatie met het buitenland wordt gedaan ligt in de buurt van Kala Ghoda, zuidelijk Mumbai. Bij Malad, dat in de buurt ligt van Kala Ghoda, komen de datakabels die internet- en telecommunicatie tussen continenten mogelijk maken het Indiase vasteland binnen. De NTRO zit er letterlijk boven op. Hierbij gaat het om communicatie tussen India en het buitenland. De inlichtingendiensten van India hebben daarnaast genoeg binnenlandse capaciteit om de iedere Indiase burger af te luisteren.

Afluisteren
Het afluisterschandaal van de NTRO werd eind april 2010 door het weekblad Outlook onthuld. In de editie van 3 mei van dat jaar zegt een senior inlichtingenofficier dat de NTRO geen toestemming nodig heeft om een telefoon te tappen. Het gaat volgens hem om het onderscheppen van een signaal tussen de gsm en de antenne. Volgens de officier gaat het daarom niet om het afluisteren van een telefoonnummer. Het apparaat zou signalen binnen een cirkel van twee kilometer kunnen onderscheppen. De medewerker van de NTRO lijkt te suggereren dat er helemaal niets mis is met het afluisteren met behulp van een IMSI catcher, het signaal wordt gewoon opgevangen en bewaard. Op dezelfde wijze lijkt de minister van Binnenlandse Zaken van India, P. Chidambaram, de storm rond het afluisterschandaal te willen sussen. In een van de eerste reacties verklaarden bronnen binnen de regering dat het ging om een proef van de NTRO. De regering had geen opdracht gegeven, dus is zij niet verantwoordelijk, en er hoeft geen onderzoek te komen. Volgens de minister waren in de bestanden van de NTRO ook geen bewijzen gevonden van het afluisteren van politici. Tevens wees de regering erop dat de NTRO niet zelfstandig operaties uitvoert, maar werkt onder auspiciën van andere diensten. Bij deze diensten zou het gaan om zeven inlichtingendiensten: het Intelligence Bureau, de Research and Analysis Wing, de Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, Enforcement Directorate, Narcotics Control Bureau, Economic Intelligence Unit and Directorate-General of Investigations, Income-Tax (CBDT). Een oud medewerker van de NTRO voegde daar in de Economic Times van 24 april 2010 nog aan toe dat de dienst slechts onderzoek doet naar technische hulpmiddelen. Volgens hem luistert de dienst geen individuen af en wordt het NTRO in diskrediet gebracht door verongelijkte werknemers.
Ook de politie heeft de bevoegdheid om af te luisteren. De minister van Binnenlandse Zaken stelde dat ruim dertig instanties in de verschillende Indiase deelstaten de mogelijkheid hebben om te tappen en af te luisteren. Volgens minister Chidambaram ligt daarom de macht tot het uitvoeren van deze observaties niet alleen op nationaal niveau, maar ook op deelstaatniveau. Dat dit ook daadwerkelijk aan de hand is werd in dezelfde periode geïllustreerd door een afluisterschandaal van de CBDT. Deze dienst had lobbyisten van de telecommunicatie industrie afgeluisterd ten tijde van de toewijzing van mobiele breedband netwerken met de 2G technologie. Bij deze onthulling werd niet de CBDT beschuldigd van illegale taps, maar kregen de bedrijven het te verduren. De afgeluisterde gesprekken onthulden de grote invloed van de industrie op de besluitvorming van de regering. De CBDT luisterde de lobbyisten af in het kader van een onderzoek naar belastingfraude. Zowel politiek als binnen de juridische wereld worden er vraagtekens gezet bij het afluisteren van mensen die worden verdacht van belastingfraude.
Hoewel de onthulling in de Outlook erg gedetailleerd was, was het antwoord van de minister en de dienst dat er niets aan de hand is. Er wordt niet afgeluisterd en er is geen bewijs gevonden dat het is gebeurd, luidde het officiële regeringsstandpunt. De Indiase Telecomwet van 1885 en de toegevoegde wijziging van 2008 maken afluisteren echter wel mogelijk. Bij het afluisteren gaat het om uitzonderlijke situaties en niet om een standaard regel. Het was dus wel degelijk een schending van wettelijke regels. In de week erna bevestigden enkele inlichtingenofficieren anoniem dat er op grote schaal afgeluisterd wordt. Naast de vier politici waarover Outlook in het nummer van 3 mei 2010 publiceerde bleken er veel meer mensen te zijn afgeluisterd. Het gaat daarbij naast politici om ambtenaren, zakenmensen, gewone Indiërs en beroemdheden. Volgens de anonieme officieren werden de gesprekken zonder wettelijke toestemming afgeluisterd . De officieren vertellen in de Outlook van 10 mei 2010 dat zij de opdrachten mondeling kregen of soms op een geel memo papiertje. Volgens de officieren waren de afluisteroperaties allemaal illegaal , zonder toestemming van de NSA of het kabinet van de minister-president. Er mocht ook geen administratie van worden bijgehouden. De IMSI catchers werden ingezet om bijvoorbeeld in Delhi, de hoofdstad van India, rond te rijden om gsm verkeer op te vangen. Eigenlijk waren het ‘fishing operaties’ op zoek naar dat ene gesprek dat mogelijk een gevaar kan zijn voor de nationale veiligheid. Het systeem scant alle nummers zonder onderscheid te maken en kan alles opnemen. Op elk willekeurig moment kan het apparaat dat in India is gebruikt maximaal 64 gesprekken opnemen. Sommige gesprekken werden vernietigd, andere werden bewaard. Het wordt uit het interview met de medewerkers niet duidelijk wie er verantwoordelijk was voor het besluit om gesprekken al dan niet te vernietigen. In The Times of India worden anonieme bronnen aangehaald die zeggen dat het afluisteren van de politici was uitgevoerd door “junior officials”, maar dat hun werk deel uitmaakt van een grotere operatie.
Volgens de medewerkers van de inlichtingendiensten gaat het om in totaal vijf apparaten die door de NTRO gebruikt worden. Van de ritten van de auto met de IMSI Catcher worden twee logboeken bijgehouden. Het ene logboek bevat geen enkel detail van de operatie. Het andere logboek is “top secret” en bevat gedetailleerde informatie over de locatie waar het apparaat heeft afgeluisterd. De precieze route, bestemmingen, data en tijden zijn in dat logboek te vinden. Medewerkers van de inlichtingendienst vertelden dat het niet alleen de NTRO hoeft te zijn die verantwoordelijk is voor het tappen. Verschillende van de zeven inlichtingendiensten en zelfs de politie hebben een IMSI catcher. Bronnen in de inlichtingenwereld hebben het weekblad Outlook aangegeven dat er in totaal 90 apparaten zijn aangeschaft door de verschillende instanties. Vooral in regio’s waar veel moslims wonen gebeurt dit volgens de officier. De inlichtingenofficieren die in Outlook worden geïnterviewd worden ondersteund in hun verhalen door een oud- directeur van het Intelligence Bureau (IB), dhr. Dhar. Hij vertelde het Indiase weekblad Tehelka dat de NTRO namen moet hebben gekregen om af te luisteren. Tevens verklaart hij dat politieke leiders regelmatig inlichtingendiensten de opdracht geven om mensen af te luisteren zonder schriftelijke toestemming. Medewerkers van diensten die weigeren aan deze afluisterpraktijken mee te doen, worden ontslagen volgens de oud-directeur van het Intelligence Bureau.

Iedereen is verdacht
Het is onduidelijk wat het doel is van de afluisteroperatie die zeker vier jaar heeft geduurd. Hoewel de verantwoordelijk minister in zijn eerste reactie had aangegeven niets van het afluisteren af te weten, gaven regeringsbronnen aan de The Times of India toe dat de NTRO wel toezicht uitvoerde. Welk toezicht wordt door de Times niet vermeld. Volgens de bronnen staan die activiteiten onder directe verantwoordelijkheid van de National Security Advisor of het kabinet van de minister-president waaronder de Research and Analysis Wing en de NTRO valt. Bij de NSA zou het gaan om dhr. Narayanan, de man die aan de wieg stond van het afluisteren in 2005. In de Indiase media worden ook verbanden gelegd met de lange traditie van de Indian National Congress (INC), een regeringspartij, om de oppositie in diskrediet te brengen door het verzamelen van politiek gevoelige informatie door het inzetten van inlichtingendiensten. Het dagblad The Pioneer vergelijkt het met de werkwijze van de Indiase roddelpers, maar dan veel serieuzer. Volgens de krant gaat het er bij het afluisteren om om te achterhalen wie elkaar ontmoeten, met wie iemand contact heeft, met wie personen van de elite slapen en vergelijkbare vragen uit de roddelbladen. Het lijkt er volgens de krant op dat de inlichtingendiensten de levens van politieke spelers in kaart probeert te brengen.
De Indian National Congress (INC) is echter niet de enige politieke partij die deze middelen inzet. Het lijkt erop dat het binnen de Indiase democratie de gewoonte is om de oppositie op allerlei manieren in de gaten te houden. De wijze waarop de oppositie het schandaal gebruikte om de regering onder druk te zetten, lijkt deze stelling ook te ondersteunen. De oppositie is geschokt en wil uitleg van de minister-president, maar daadwerkelijke wettelijke hervormingen werden niet met zoveel woorden geëist.
De verantwoordelijk minister voor de afluisteroperatie is Chidambaram. Chidambaram is lid van de Indian National Congress (INC). Onder de afgeluisterde politici bevond zich ook de minister voor Consumentenzaken, voedsel en distributie, Sharad Pawar van de Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), een afsplitsing van de INC. De NCP neemt op dit moment ook deel aan de regering samen met het INC. Ook leden van de partij van de minister van Binnenlandse Zaken zoals dhr. Digvijay Singh werden afgeluisterd, evenals leden van de oppositie, zoals het hoofd van de Communistische Partij India, dhr. Karat. Het afluisteren vond niet alleen nationaal plaats, ook in deelstaten van India zoals in Bihar werden hoge politici afgeluisterd, zoals de premier van Bihar, dhr. Kumar.
De onderwerpen van de gesprekken die Outlook in haar bezit heeft, zijn uiteenlopend. Bij de gesprekken van de minister van Consumentenzaken ging het om het grote schandaal rond de Indian Premier League (IPL), de Indiase cricket competitie, IPL-gate, waar sprake was van witwassen van geld en het vooraf bepalen van de winnaar van een wedstrijd. De premier van Bihar belde een collega om te lobbyen voor meer geld voor zijn deelstaat. En van de communistische partij zijn gesprekken bewaard uit 2008 toen er oppositie werd gevoerd tegen de aankoop van nucleaire technologie van de Verenigde Staten. Hoewel Karat tegenstander was van de overeenkomst tussen India en de Verenigde Staten stond hij onderhandelingen met minister-president Singh niet in weg. Hij fungeerde ook als een belangrijke exponent van de oppositie in India tegen de overeenkomst. De gegevens over de afluisterpraktijk van de NTRO geven nu aan dat dhr. Karat toen is afgeluisterd. Uiteindelijk bleef de Communistische Partij bij haar standpunt om tegen te stemmen, maar de regering behaalde toch een nipte overwinning. De Samajwadi Party (SP) en tien leden van de BJP, beide oppositie partijen, hielpen de regering aan haar meerderheid. De overeenkomst met de Amerikanen kon doorgaan. Naar nu blijkt werden er tijdens de onderhandelingen over het akkoord met de Amerikanen parlementariërs omgekocht. In documenten van de Amerikaanse vertegenwoordiging in India die door Wikileaks zijn buitgemaakt, blijkt dat de Amerikanen op de hoogte waren van de steekpenningen die parlementariërs ontvingen om voor te stemmen. Of de afgeluisterde gesprekken hebben bijgedragen aan het omkopen van leden van het parlement is niet duidelijk.

DE NTRO als schandaal
De NTRO heeft absoluut geen schoon blazoen. De korte historie van de dienst kent al vele schandalen, gebrekkig functioneren, politieke benoemingen en tekenen van corruptie. India kent geen Commissie van Toezicht op de Inlichtingen en Veiligheidsdiensten, wel een algemene controledienst, te vergelijken met de algemene Rekenkamer. De regering stelde dhr. P.V. Kumar van de Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) aan om de misstanden bij de NTRO te onderzoeken. Kumar is een oud medewerker van de Research and Analysis Wing en werd na zijn onderzoek begin 2011 aangesteld om de NTRO te leiden. In hoeverre er een einde is gekomen aan de misstappen is dan ook niet duidelijk. Een van de schandalen naast het afluisteren van politici is de benoeming van de tweede man van de dienst, dhr. Vijararaghavan, en zijn betrokkenheid bij een deal met het Amerikaanse bedrijf CISCO. Na de deal met CISCO werd de dochter van Vijararaghavan door CISCO in dienst genomen. De positie van de tweede man staat ook ter discussie omdat hij naast zijn functie bij de NTRO ook nog zijn oude functie als hoofd van Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) vervult en tevens directeur is van een lobbygroep van de elektronica-industrie. Ook diverse andere benoemingen worden door de CAG onderzocht op hun onvolkomenheden. Het gerechtshof in Delhi oordeelde verder dat er een onderzoek moet komen naar administratieve en financiële onregelmatigheden bij de aanstelling van ruim zeventig werknemers. Vacatures zouden zijn opgevuld met niet capabele mensen zonder de juiste opleiding en voor sommige functies is zelfs geen vacature uitgeschreven, maar die zijn onderhands opgevuld.
Naast het personeelsbeleid zijn er ook vragen gerezen over de aankoop van apparatuur door de dienst. Een medewerker schafte zonder overleg met het agentschap dat over de aankopen van gevoelige apparatuur gaat, computers aan die vitale Chinese onderdelen bevat. De spanningen tussen India en China fluctueren al decennia lang tussen gespannen en vriendschappelijk. De laatste jaren gaat het beter, maar tien jaar geleden had de verhouding tussen de twee landen een nieuw dieptepunt bereikt na Indiase kernproeven. En dat de relatie verre van close is maakten Canadese onderzoekers van de Information Warfare Monitor (IWM) duidelijk toen zij India erop wezen dat begin 2010 Chinese hackers zich de toegang hadden verschaft tot computers van het Indiase leger. IWM had de Indiase overheid er een jaar eerder al op gewezen dat haar computers en servers kwetsbaar waren voor aanvallen uit vooral China. Op de computers die in 2010 gehackt zijn, zou informatie staan over het raketprogramma van India, de artillerie-brigades van Assam, luchtmachtbases en andere militaire informatie. De Canadese onderzoekers produceerden een rapport over de Chinese elektronische infiltratie, ‘Shadow in the Cloud’. In mei 2010 bleek dat de schade van de Chinese spionage operatie aanzienlijk is. Computers en servers van diplomatieke vestigingen van India in Kabul, Moskou, Dubai, Abuja, in de Verenigde Staten, Servië, België, Duitsland, Cyprus, het Verenigd Koninkrijk en Zimbabwe waren door de Chinezen overgenomen. Ook het kantoor van de National Security Advisor was besmet en zelfs bedrijven als Tata, YKK India en DLF Limited. Naast deze militair en economisch strategische spionage hadden de Chinezen het ook gemunt op de Tibetaanse gemeenschap in Dharamshala.
Een andere medewerker kocht satelliet communicatiemiddelen van een bedrijf uit Singapore (Singapore Technologies), een bedrijf dat door de Indiase overheid op een zwarte lijst was geplaatst. Bij de aanbesteding van de satelliet communicatie apparatuur kwamen de specificaties van de NTRO precies overeen met het product van Singapore Technologies. In andere gevallen, zoals bij de aanschaf van onbemande vliegtuigen van het Israëlische bedrijf Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) is door het NTRO geen aanbesteding uitgeschreven volgens de onderzoekers van CAG. De onbemande vliegtuigen moesten in januari 2010 aan de grond worden gehouden, omdat bleek dat de NTRO onveilige en open radiofrequenties gebruikte voor de besturing van de vliegtuigen. Volgens de India Today zouden ook de onbemande vliegtuigen van het Indiase leger op deze manier worden bediend. Bij grote uitgaven dient de NTRO een aanbesteding te doen en toestemming te vragen aan de National Security Advisor en uiteindelijk de minister-president. Ook dit laatste is bij diverse aankopen door de dienst niet gebeurd.
Naast deze personele en technische misstappen wordt de kwaliteit van het werk van de dienst in het publieke debat in India in twijfel getrokken. Hoewel haar taak het verzamelen van informatie over mogelijke terroristische aanslagen, cyber crime, opstanden en illegale grensoverschrijdingen is, heeft de dienst geen enkel duidelijk succes geboekt. De aanslagen van 26 november 2008 in Mumbai worden gezien als het bewijs van de mislukking van de dienst. Toch lijkt de dienst onaantastbaar, zoals zoveel inlichtingendiensten. Twee jaar later was het opnieuw raak. Op basis van informatie van de inlichtingendiensten werd een man gearresteerd die verantwoordelijk werd gehouden van de aanslag op de “Duitse bakkerij”, een populaire uitgaansgelegenheid voor toeristen in Pune. Minister Chidambaram feliciteerde de inlichtingendiensten, maar ze bleken het bij het verkeerde eind te hebben. De man moest worden vrijgelaten wegens ontlastend bewijs.
En hoewel de NTRO de stofzuiger is van data van Indiase burgers staat zij net als de andere spelers in de Indiase inlichtingenwereld bekend om het ‘kwijtraken’ van gevoelige data. In 2003 was de Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) plotseling 53 computers kwijt. Toen zij werden teruggevonden, ontbraken de harde schijven. Op de harde schijven stonden geheime codes voor communicatie met inlichtingendiensten en het leger. In 2006 raakte een belangrijke wetenschapper van de DRDO zijn laptop kwijt op het vliegveld van Delhi. Op de laptop bewaarde de wetenschapper geheime informatie over het Indiase kernwapenarsenaal en raketsystemen. En in 2008 raakte een directeur van de NTRO zijn laptop met geheime informatie over de kernwapenprogramma’s in Pakistan, China en Noord Korea kwijt in Washington DC.

Het schandaal staat niet op zich
De NTRO is niet de enige dienst die tekenen vertoont van verval. Ook de dienst waaruit zij is voortgekomen, de Research and Analysis Wing, wordt geteisterd door technische, personele, administratieve en financiële schandalen. Eigenlijk is het niet onlogisch dat er schandalen optreden binnen de Indiase inlichtingenwereld. Met zoveel onregelmatigheden is het bijna vanzelfsprekend dat er schandalen plaatsvinden die ook Indiase burgers raken. Het NTRO schandaal staat dan ook niet op zich. Vergelijkbare afluisterpraktijken zijn de afgelopen decennia aan het licht gekomen. In de jaren tachtig kwam aan het licht dat de Indiase overheid politieke leiders afluisterde. Daarnaast werden ook toen toonaangevende journalisten in de gaten gehouden. In 1990 – 1991 was het opnieuw raak met een nieuw afluisterschandaal. De Peoples Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), een burgerrechtenbeweging, bracht de zaak voor de rechter. Tijdens de rechtzaak gaf de CBI, Central Bureau of Investigation, toe dat op grote schaal journalisten, parlementariërs en leden van het kabinet zowel op nationaal als op deelstaatniveau waren afgeluisterd. Het CBI gaf toe dat deze afluisterpartij onwettig was.
En is er wat veranderd na het schandaal in het voorjaar van 2010 dat de Indiase politiek enkele weken bezig hield? Nee, in juli van hetzelfde jaar werd de IMSI Catcher als nieuw gepresenteerd in een operatie met de codenaam Fox, alsof het om een nieuwe strijd ging tegen terrorisme en criminele bendes. De media waren het schandaal van twee maanden eerder al weer vergeten.

Buro Jansen & Janssen

Find this story at 20 April 2011

MUMBAI, India — The terrorists who struck this city last month stunned authorities not only with their use of sophisticated weaponry but also with their comfort with modern technology.

The terrorists navigated across the Arabian Sea to Mumbai from Karachi, Pakistan, with the help of a global positioning system handset. While under way, they communicated using a satellite phone with those in Pakistan believed to have coordinated the attacks. They recognized their targets and knew the most direct routes to reach them in part because they had studied satellite photos from Google Earth.

And, perhaps most significantly, throughout the three-day siege at two luxury hotels and a Jewish center, the Pakistani-based handlers communicated with the attackers using Internet phones that complicate efforts to trace and intercept calls.

Those handlers, who were apparently watching the attacks unfold live on television, were able to inform the attackers of the movement of security forces from news accounts and provide the gunmen with instructions and encouragement, authorities said.

Hasan Gafoor, Mumbai’s police commissioner, said Monday that as once complicated technologies — including global positioning systems and satellite phones — have become simpler to operate, terrorists, like everyone else, have become adept at using them. “Well, whether terrorists or common criminals, they do try to be a step ahead in terms of technology,” he said.

Indian security forces surrounding the buildings were able to monitor the terrorists’ outgoing calls by intercepting their cellphone signals. But Indian police officials said those directing the attacks, who are believed to be from Lashkar-e-Taiba, a militant group based in Pakistan, were using a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone service, which has complicated efforts to determine their whereabouts and identities.

VoIP services, in which conversations are carried over the Internet as opposed to conventional phone lines or cellphone towers, are increasingly popular with people looking to save money on long distance and international calls. Many such services, like Skype and Vonage, allow a user to call another VoIP-enabled device anywhere in the world free of charge, or to call a standard telephone or cellphone at a deeply discounted rate.

But the same services are also increasingly popular with criminals and terrorists, a trend that worries some law enforcement and intelligence agencies. “It’s a concern,” said one Indian security official, who spoke anonymously because the investigation was continuing. “It’s not something we have seen before.”

In mid-October, a draft United States Army intelligence report highlighted the growing interest of Islamic militants in using VoIP, noting recent news reports of Taliban insurgents using Skype to communicate. The unclassified report, which examined discussions of emerging technologies on jihadi Web sites, was obtained by the Federation of American Scientists, a Washington-based nonprofit group that monitors the impact of science on national security.

VoIP calls pose an array of difficulties for intelligence and law enforcement services, according to communications experts. “It means the phone-tapping techniques that work for old traditional interception don’t work,” said Matt Blaze, a professor and computer security expert at the University of Pennsylvania.

An agency using conventional tracing techniques to track a call from a land line or cellphone to a VoIP subscriber would be able to get only as far as the switching station that converts the voice call into Internet data, communications experts said. The switch, usually owned and operated by the company providing the VoIP service, could be located thousands of miles from the subscriber.

The subscriber’s phone number would also likely reveal no information about his location. For instance, someone in New York could dial a local phone number but actually be connected via the Internet to a person in Thailand.

In Mumbai, authorities have declined to disclose the names of the VoIP companies whose services the Lashkar-e-Taiba handlers used, but reports in Indian news media have said the calls have been traced to companies in New Jersey and Austria. Yet investigators have said they are convinced that the handlers who directed the attacks were actually sitting somewhere in Pakistan during the calls.

One senior Lashkar-e-Taiba leader who American officials believe may have played a key role in planning the Mumbai attacks is Zarrar Shah. Mr. Shah, known to be a specialist in communications technology, may have been aware of the difficulties in tracing VoIP.

To determine the location of a VoIP caller, an investigating agency has to access a database kept by the service provider. The database logs the unique numerical identifier, known as an Internet Protocol (I.P.) address, of whatever device the subscriber was using to connect to the Internet. This could be a computer equipped with a microphone, a special VoIP phone, or even a cellphone with software that routes calls over the Internet using wireless connections as opposed to cellular signals.

It would then take additional electronic sleuthing to determine where the device was located. The customer’s identity could be obtained from the service provider as well, but might prove fraudulent, experts said.

Getting the I.P. address and then determining its location can take days longer than a standard phone trace, particularly if service providers involved are in a foreign country.

“Ultimately, we can trace them,” said Mr. Gafoor, referring to VoIP calls. “It takes a little longer, but we will trace them.”

Washington is assisting the Indian authorities in obtaining this information, according to another Indian police official who also spoke anonymously because of the continuing investigation.

Further complicating this task is the fact that I.P. addresses change frequently and are less tied to a specific location than phone numbers.

Computer experts said that while these challenges were formidable, none were insurmountable. And they cautioned that security services and police forces might be disingenuous when they complain about terrorists’ use of new technologies, including VoIP.

The experts said that VoIP calls left a far richer data trail for investigators to mine than someone calling from an old-fashioned pay phone. Mr. Blaze, the computer security expert at the University of Pennsylvania, also noted that 15 years ago the Mumbai attackers would probably not have had the capacity to make calls to their handlers during the course of their attacks, depriving investigators of vital clues to their identities. “As one door closes — traditional wire line tapping — all these other doors have opened,” Mr. Blaze said.

December 9, 2008
By JEREMY KAHN

Find this story at 9 December 2008

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Exclusive: British spy agency collects and stores vast quantities of global email messages, Facebook posts, internet histories and calls, and shares them with NSA, latest documents from Edward Snowden reveal

Secret document detailing GCHQ’s ambition to ‘master the internet’

Britain’s spy agency GCHQ has secretly gained access to the network of cables which carry the world’s phone calls and internet traffic and has started to process vast streams of sensitive personal information which it is sharing with its American partner, the National Security Agency (NSA).

The sheer scale of the agency’s ambition is reflected in the titles of its two principal components: Mastering the Internet and Global Telecoms Exploitation, aimed at scooping up as much online and telephone traffic as possible. This is all being carried out without any form of public acknowledgement or debate.

One key innovation has been GCHQ’s ability to tap into and store huge volumes of data drawn from fibre-optic cables for up to 30 days so that it can be sifted and analysed. That operation, codenamed Tempora, has been running for some 18 months.

GCHQ and the NSA are consequently able to access and process vast quantities of communications between entirely innocent people, as well as targeted suspects.

This includes recordings of phone calls, the content of email messages, entries on Facebook and the history of any internet user’s access to websites – all of which is deemed legal, even though the warrant system was supposed to limit interception to a specified range of targets.

The existence of the programme has been disclosed in documents shown to the Guardian by the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden as part of his attempt to expose what he has called “the largest programme of suspicionless surveillance in human history”.

“It’s not just a US problem. The UK has a huge dog in this fight,” Snowden told the Guardian. “They [GCHQ] are worse than the US.”

However, on Friday a source with knowledge of intelligence argued that the data was collected legally under a system of safeguards, and had provided material that had led to significant breakthroughs in detecting and preventing serious crime.

Britain’s technical capacity to tap into the cables that carry the world’s communications – referred to in the documents as special source exploitation – has made GCHQ an intelligence superpower.

By 2010, two years after the project was first trialled, it was able to boast it had the “biggest internet access” of any member of the Five Eyes electronic eavesdropping alliance, comprising the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

UK officials could also claim GCHQ “produces larger amounts of metadata than NSA”. (Metadata describes basic information on who has been contacting whom, without detailing the content.)

By May last year 300 analysts from GCHQ, and 250 from the NSA, had been assigned to sift through the flood of data.

The Americans were given guidelines for its use, but were told in legal briefings by GCHQ lawyers: “We have a light oversight regime compared with the US”.

When it came to judging the necessity and proportionality of what they were allowed to look for, would-be American users were told it was “your call”.

The Guardian understands that a total of 850,000 NSA employees and US private contractors with top secret clearance had access to GCHQ databases.

The documents reveal that by last year GCHQ was handling 600m “telephone events” each day, had tapped more than 200 fibre-optic cables and was able to process data from at least 46 of them at a time.
Document quoting Lt Gen Keith Alexander, head of the NSA, during a visit to Britain

Each of the cables carries data at a rate of 10 gigabits per second, so the tapped cables had the capacity, in theory, to deliver more than 21 petabytes a day – equivalent to sending all the information in all the books in the British Library 192 times every 24 hours.

And the scale of the programme is constantly increasing as more cables are tapped and GCHQ data storage facilities in the UK and abroad are expanded with the aim of processing terabits (thousands of gigabits) of data at a time.

For the 2 billion users of the world wide web, Tempora represents a window on to their everyday lives, sucking up every form of communication from the fibre-optic cables that ring the world.

The NSA has meanwhile opened a second window, in the form of the Prism operation, revealed earlier this month by the Guardian, from which it secured access to the internal systems of global companies that service the internet.

The GCHQ mass tapping operation has been built up over five years by attaching intercept probes to transatlantic fibre-optic cables where they land on British shores carrying data to western Europe from telephone exchanges and internet servers in north America.

This was done under secret agreements with commercial companies, described in one document as “intercept partners”.

The papers seen by the Guardian suggest some companies have been paid for the cost of their co-operation and GCHQ went to great lengths to keep their names secret. They were assigned “sensitive relationship teams” and staff were urged in one internal guidance paper to disguise the origin of “special source” material in their reports for fear that the role of the companies as intercept partners would cause “high-level political fallout”.

The source with knowledge of intelligence said on Friday the companies were obliged to co-operate in this operation. They are forbidden from revealing the existence of warrants compelling them to allow GCHQ access to the cables.

“There’s an overarching condition of the licensing of the companies that they have to co-operate in this. Should they decline, we can compel them to do so. They have no choice.”

The source said that although GCHQ was collecting a “vast haystack of data” what they were looking for was “needles”.

“Essentially, we have a process that allows us to select a small number of needles in a haystack. We are not looking at every piece of straw. There are certain triggers that allow you to discard or not examine a lot of data so you are just looking at needles. If you had the impression we are reading millions of emails, we are not. There is no intention in this whole programme to use it for looking at UK domestic traffic – British people talking to each other,” the source said.

He explained that when such “needles” were found a log was made and the interception commissioner could see that log.

“The criteria are security, terror, organised crime. And economic well-being. There’s an auditing process to go back through the logs and see if it was justified or not. The vast majority of the data is discarded without being looked at … we simply don’t have the resources.”

However, the legitimacy of the operation is in doubt. According to GCHQ’s legal advice, it was given the go-ahead by applying old law to new technology. The 2000 Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) requires the tapping of defined targets to be authorised by a warrant signed by the home secretary or foreign secretary.

However, an obscure clause allows the foreign secretary to sign a certificate for the interception of broad categories of material, as long as one end of the monitored communications is abroad. But the nature of modern fibre-optic communications means that a proportion of internal UK traffic is relayed abroad and then returns through the cables.

Parliament passed the Ripa law to allow GCHQ to trawl for information, but it did so 13 years ago with no inkling of the scale on which GCHQ would attempt to exploit the certificates, enabling it to gather and process data regardless of whether it belongs to identified targets.

The categories of material have included fraud, drug trafficking and terrorism, but the criteria at any one time are secret and are not subject to any public debate. GCHQ’s compliance with the certificates is audited by the agency itself, but the results of those audits are also secret.

An indication of how broad the dragnet can be was laid bare in advice from GCHQ’s lawyers, who said it would be impossible to list the total number of people targeted because “this would be an infinite list which we couldn’t manage”.

There is an investigatory powers tribunal to look into complaints that the data gathered by GCHQ has been improperly used, but the agency reassured NSA analysts in the early days of the programme, in 2009: “So far they have always found in our favour”.

Historically, the spy agencies have intercepted international communications by focusing on microwave towers and satellites. The NSA’s intercept station at Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire played a leading role in this. One internal document quotes the head of the NSA, Lieutenant General Keith Alexander, on a visit to Menwith Hill in June 2008, asking: “Why can’t we collect all the signals all the time? Sounds like a good summer project for Menwith.”

By then, however, satellite interception accounted for only a small part of the network traffic. Most of it now travels on fibre-optic cables, and the UK’s position on the western edge of Europe gave it natural access to cables emerging from the Atlantic.

The data collected provides a powerful tool in the hands of the security agencies, enabling them to sift for evidence of serious crime. According to the source, it has allowed them to discover new techniques used by terrorists to avoid security checks and to identify terrorists planning atrocities. It has also been used against child exploitation networks and in the field of cyberdefence.

It was claimed on Friday that it directly led to the arrest and imprisonment of a cell in the Midlands who were planning co-ordinated attacks; to the arrest of five Luton-based individuals preparing acts of terror, and to the arrest of three London-based people planning attacks prior to the Olympics.

As the probes began to generate data, GCHQ set up a three-year trial at the GCHQ station in Bude, Cornwall. By the summer of 2011, GCHQ had probes attached to more than 200 internet links, each carrying data at 10 gigabits a second. “This is a massive amount of data!” as one internal slideshow put it. That summer, it brought NSA analysts into the Bude trials. In the autumn of 2011, it launched Tempora as a mainstream programme, shared with the Americans.

The intercept probes on the transatlantic cables gave GCHQ access to its special source exploitation. Tempora allowed the agency to set up internet buffers so it could not simply watch the data live but also store it – for three days in the case of content and 30 days for metadata.

“Internet buffers represent an exciting opportunity to get direct access to enormous amounts of GCHQ’s special source data,” one document explained.

The processing centres apply a series of sophisticated computer programmes in order to filter the material through what is known as MVR – massive volume reduction. The first filter immediately rejects high-volume, low-value traffic, such as peer-to-peer downloads, which reduces the volume by about 30%. Others pull out packets of information relating to “selectors” – search terms including subjects, phone numbers and email addresses of interest. Some 40,000 of these were chosen by GCHQ and 31,000 by the NSA. Most of the information extracted is “content”, such as recordings of phone calls or the substance of email messages. The rest is metadata.

The GCHQ documents that the Guardian has seen illustrate a constant effort to build up storage capacity at the stations at Cheltenham, Bude and at one overseas location, as well a search for ways to maintain the agency’s comparative advantage as the world’s leading communications companies increasingly route their cables through Asia to cut costs. Meanwhile, technical work is ongoing to expand GCHQ’s capacity to ingest data from new super cables carrying data at 100 gigabits a second. As one training slide told new users: “You are in an enviable position – have fun and make the most of it.”

Ewen MacAskill, Julian Borger, Nick Hopkins, Nick Davies and James Ball
The Guardian, Friday 21 June 2013 17.23 BST

Find this story at 21 June 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Britain’s intelligence agencies will emerge as the biggest winners from the Government’s review of public spending, The Telegraph can disclose.
MI6, MI5 and Government Communications Headquarters will see an increase in their combined £1.9 billion budget

MI6, MI5 and Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) will see an inflation-busting increase in their combined £1.9 billion budget, underlining the Government’s concern over the growing terrorist threat following the Woolwich attack.

Police spending on counter-terrorism will also be protected and will rise in line with inflation.

The percentage increase in the budgets of the intelligence agencies – at more than three per cent in addition to inflation – will be the largest of any item of government spending including the NHS, schools and international development.

It will lead to the agencies receiving about another £100 million in funding annually from 2015.

Local councils are also expected to emerge as winners with increased funding for elderly social care. Money from the ring-fenced NHS budget is expected to be diverted to help fund care homes and home visits for frail pensioners.
Related Articles
George Osborne: I’d rather not have tax rises but can’t rule it out 27 Jun 2013
Sketch: Dr Osborne needles Labour 26 Jun 2013
Tax rises likely after spending review cuts, says IFS 26 Jun 2013
Are the two Eds Attlee and Cripps – or Tory clones? 25 Jun 2013
Nick Clegg: even more cuts are coming 25 Jun 2013
Married couples to be offered tax breaks 24 Jun 2013

George Osborne will on Wednesday unveil the Government’s spending plans for the 2015-16 financial year following months of Whitehall wrangling.

The Spending Review, which will cut a further £11.5 billion in public expenditure, is regarded as especially sensitive as the cuts will be implemented just weeks before the next general election.

The biggest losers will include the Business department, the Culture department, the Home Office and the Justice department, which are expected to each lose about eight per cent from their budgets.

The Ministry of Defence will see its budget cut by about £1 billion, although this will not involve further reductions in front-line troops.

Mr Osborne is also expected to set out plans for long-term caps on welfare spending and other areas of government expenditure which are not tightly controlled.

The Chancellor will detail proposals to divert the money saved from Whitehall spending to fund long-term infrastructure projects such as widening major roads.

He is expected to say: “Britain is moving from rescue to recovery. But while the British economy is leaving intensive care, now we need to secure that recovery.

“We’re saving money on welfare and waste to invest in the roads and railways, schooling and science our economy needs to succeed in the future.”

The intelligence agencies have recently faced criticism that they are struggling to deal with emerging threats, amid suggestions that MI5 and MI6 could have done more to prevent the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich. One of the suspects had attempted to travel to Somalia and both were known to the intelligence services.

GCHQ’s activities have also come under scrutiny following accusations that it may be abusing its power in secretive projects with the United States to monitor internet traffic.

The Chancellor is understood to have contacted the heads of the three agencies last Friday to inform them of their spending increases. MI5, MI6 and GCHQ have seen their budgets fall in real terms by more than 10 per cent since 2010 and there were fears that they would face a further round of cuts.

A Whitehall source said: “This has been one of George’s personal priorities. It is vitally important we look after these budgets and they were settled last week with agreement at the very highest level.”

Mr Osborne and the Prime Minister are understood to believe the agencies need more resources to tackle the growing terrorist threat from sub-Saharan Africa and Syria, and the rising problem posed by cyber terrorism.

In the wake of the GCHQ snooping row, William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, praised the agencies’ work and cooperation with US counterparts.

Speaking in America, he said “we should have nothing but pride” in the “intelligence-sharing relationship between Britain and the United States”. He added that both countries’ intelligence work operated “under the rule of law” and “only exists to protect” people’s freedoms.

Mr Osborne confirmed on Tuesday that the NHS and schools budgets would continue to rise.

Money is also expected to be diverted from the health budget to local authorities to fund social care. Norman Lamb, a health minister, recently warned of an impending crisis in social care as councils struggled to fund enough places for ailing pensioners.

Last week, council leaders warned Mr Osborne that street lights may have to be switched off and libraries closed unless NHS funding was diverted to help pay for elderly care.

They said the amount of money spent on social care has been cut by a fifth in less than three years and they were preparing to reduce budgets further.

Mr Osborne agreed for £2 billion to be transferred from the NHS to the social care sector in his previous Spending Review, but councils said much of the money has gone on propping up the system because of the ageing population.

Ministers are also expected to set out the entitlement criteria for state help. The Government has pledged to cap the maximum bill that anyone faces for social care at £72,000 from 2016, and the details of how this will work are to be announced this week.

Earl Howe, a health minister, was asked about the growing problem in social care, with hospitals often forced not to discharge elderly patients who are infirm but not ill because they have nowhere to go. He said there would be “more news” about increased funding for social care on Wednesday and sources confirmed that the social care budget would rise after several years of cuts.

Danny Alexander, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, also hinted that the Government may speed up the introduction of its community budgets programme, which is designed to make public sector services share operations.

He urged MPs to “listen carefully” to the Chancellor’s statement for more news after being asked about the programme’s national implementation.

By Robert Winnett, Political Editor
10:00PM BST 25 Jun 2013

Find this story at 25 June 2013

© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2013

Data includes recordings of telephone calls, contents of emails, details of messages on social media and the history of internet use

Britain’s electronic eavesdropping centre, GCHQ, has started collecting data from the network of fibre-optic cables carrying the world’s telephone calls and internet traffic, it was reported tonight.

The massive programme of surveillance allows the agency to store vast volumes of information for up to 30 days which it can then study for evidence of terrorist and criminal activity.

The claims, in The Guardian, will provoke a fresh civil liberties storm following recent allegations that thousands of Britons could have been spied on by GCHQ through a covert link with the US National Security Agency (NSA).

According to the paper, the agency has been running Operation Tempora for 18 months under which it gains access to transatlantic cables carrying data about phone calls and internet use. It is said to share information gleaned from it with the NSA.

The data includes recordings of telephone calls, contents of emails, details of messages on social media and the history of internet use.

Documents seen by the paper suggest that by last year GCHQ was handling 600m “telephone events” each day, had tapped more than 200 fibre-optic cables and was able to process data from at least 46 at a time.

A source told The Guardian that the eavesdropping allowed the security services to arrest three people planning attacks on last year’s London Olympics, as well as terrorist cells in the Midlands and Luton. It has also been used against child exploitation networks and to boost cyberdefence.

A GCHQ spokesman said: “It is longstanding practice that we do not comment on intelligence matters.”

He added: “GCHQ takes its obligations under the law very seriously. Our work is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework which ensures that our activities are authorised, necessary and proportionate, and that there is rigorous oversight, including from the Secretary of State, the Interception and Intelligence Services Commissioners and the Intelligence and Security Committee.”

* Edward Snowden has been charged in his absence by US prosecutors with spying and theft of government property. The charges are included in sealed documents filed by prosecutors.

Nigel Morris
Saturday, 22 June 2013

Find this story at 22 June 2013

© independent.co.uk

Amid leaks from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, senior intelligence source reveals worries were voiced in 2008

GCHQ taps can intercept UK and US phone and internet traffic. Photograph: EPA

Senior figures inside British intelligence have been alarmed by GCHQ’s secret decision to tap into transatlantic cables in order to engage in the bulk interception of phone calls and internet traffic.

According to one source who has been directly involved in GCHQ operations, concerns were expressed when the project was being discussed internally in 2008: “We felt we were starting to overstep the mark with some of it. People from MI5 were complaining that they were going too far from a civil liberties perspective … We all had reservations about it, because we all thought: ‘If this was used against us, we wouldn’t stand a chance’.”

The Guardian revealed on Friday that GCHQ has placed more than 200 probes on transatlantic cables and is processing 600m “telephone events” a day as well as up to 39m gigabytes of internet traffic. Using a programme codenamed Tempora, it can store and analyse voice recordings, the content of emails, entries on Facebook, the use of websites as well as the “metadata” which records who has contacted who. The programme is shared with GCHQ’s American partner, the National Security Agency.

Interviews with the UK source and the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden raise questions about whether the programme:

■ Exploits existing law which was passed by parliament without any anticipation that it would be used for this purpose.

■ For the first time allows GCHQ to process bulk internal UK traffic which is routed overseas via these cables.

■ Allows the NSA to engage in bulk intercepts of internal US traffic which would be forbidden in its own territory.

■ Functions with no effective oversight.

The key law is the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, Ripa, which requires the home secretary or foreign secretary to sign warrants for the interception of the communications of defined targets. But the law also allows the foreign secretary to sign certificates that authorise GCHQ to trawl for broad categories of information on condition that one end of the communication is outside the UK.

According to the UK source: “Not so long ago, this was all about attaching crocodile clips to copper wires. And it was all about voice. Now, it’s about the internet – massive scale – but still using the same law that was devised for crocodile clips. Ripa was primarily designed for voice, not for this level of interception. They are going round Ripa. The legislation doesn’t exist for this. They are using old legislation and adapting it.”

The source claimed that even the conventional warrant system has been distorted – whereas police used to ask for a warrant before intercepting a target’s communications, they will now ask GCHQ to intercept the target’s communications and then use that information to seek a warrant.

There is a particular concern that the programme allows GCHQ to break the boundary which stopped it engaging in the bulk interception of internal UK communications. The Ripa requirement that one end of a communication must be outside the UK was a significant restriction when it was applied to phone calls using satellites, but it is no longer effective in the world of fibre-optic cables. “The point is that this is an island,” the source said. “Everything comes and goes – nearly everything – down fibre-optic cables. You make a mobile phone call, it goes to a mast and then down into a fibre-optic cable, under the ground and away. And even if the call is UK to UK, it’s very likely – because of the way the system is structured – to go out of the UK and come back in through these fibre-optic channels.”

Internet traffic is also liable to be routed internationally even if the message is exchanged between two people within the UK. “At one point, I was told that we were getting 85% of all UK domestic traffic – voice, internet, all of it – via these international cables.”

Last year, the government was mired in difficulty when it tried to pass a communications bill that became known as the “snoopers’ charter”, and would have allowed the bulk interception and storage of UK voice calls and internet traffic. The source says this debate was treated with some scepticism inside the intelligence community – “We’re sitting there, watching them debate the snoopers’ charter, thinking: ‘Well, GCHQ have been doing this for years’.”

There are similar concerns about the role of the NSA. It could have chosen to attach probes to the North American end of the cables and documents shown to the Guardian by Edward Snowden suggest that key elements of the Tempora filtering process were designed by the NSA. Instead, the NSA agency has exported its computer programs and 250 of its analysts to operate the system from the UK.

Initial inquiries by the Guardian have failed to explain why this has happened, but US legislators are likely to want to check whether the NSA has sought to bypass legal or policy requirements which restrict its activity in the US. This will be particularly sensitive if it is confirmed that Tempora is also analysing internal US traffic.

The UK source challenges the official justification for the programme; that it is necessary for the fight against terrorism and serious crime: “This is not scoring very high against those targets, because they are wise to the monitoring of their communications. If the terrorists are wise to it, why are we increasing the capability?

“The answer is that you can’t stop it. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more we develop communications technology, the more they develop technology to intercept it. There was MS Chat – easy. Then Yahoo chat – did that, too. Then Facebook. Then Skype. Then Twitter. They keep catching up. It is good for us, but it is bad for us.”

It is clear from internal paperwork that GCHQ has created systems to restrain the use of this powerful tool and to ensure that its use complies not only with Ripa but also with the 1998 Human Rights Act, which requires essentially that the use of the data must be proportional to the crime or threat investigated. Defenders insist that the mass of data is heavily filtered by the programme so that only that relating to legitimate targets is analysed.

However, there are doubts about the effectiveness of this. First, according to the UK source, “written definitions for targeting and filtering are very elastic. They are wide open to interpretation.” The target areas defined by the Ripa certificates are secret.

Second, there is further room for interpretation when human analysts become involved in using the filtered intelligence to produce what are known as “contact chains”. “Here is target A. But who is A talking to? Now we’re into B and C and D.” If analysts believe it is proportional, they can look at all the traffic – content and metadata – relating to all of the target’s contact.” GCHQ audits a sample of its analysts’ work – believed to be 5% every six months – but even the statistical results of these audits are also secret.

Beyond the detail of the operation of the programme, there is a larger, long-term anxiety, clearly expressed by the UK source: “If there was the wrong political change, it could be very dangerous. All you need is to have the wrong government in place. It is capable of abuse because there is no independent scrutiny.”

Nick Davies
The Observer, Saturday 22 June 2013 20.18 BST

Find this story at 22 June 2013
© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Leaked documents reveal Russian president was spied on during visit, as questions are raised over use of US base in Britain

US spies intercepted communications of the then Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, during a G20 summit in London. Photograph: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP

American spies based in the UK intercepted the top-secret communications of the then Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, during his visit to Britain for the G20 summit in London, leaked documents reveal.

The details of the intercept were set out in a briefing prepared by the National Security Agency (NSA), America’s biggest surveillance and eavesdropping organisation, and shared with high-ranking officials from Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

The document, leaked by the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and seen by the Guardian, shows the agency believed it might have discovered “a change in the way Russian leadership signals have been normally transmitted”.

The disclosure underlines the importance of the US spy hub at RAF Menwith Hill in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, where hundreds of NSA analysts are based, working alongside liaison officers from GCHQ.

The document was drafted in August 2009, four months after the visit by Medvedev, who joined other world leaders in London, including the US president, Barack Obama, for the event hosted by the British prime minister, Gordon Brown.

Medvedev arrived in London on Wednesday 1 April and the NSA intercepted communications from his delegation the same day, according to the NSA paper, entitled: “Russian Leadership Communications in support of President Dmitry Medvedev at the G20 summit in London – Intercept at Menwith Hill station.”

The document starts with two pictures of Medvedev smiling for the world’s media alongside Brown and Obama in bilateral discussions before the main summit.
RAF Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire. Photograph: Nigel Roddis/Reuters

The report says: “This is an analysis of signal activity in support of President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to London. The report details a change in the way Russian leadership signals have been normally transmitted. The signal activity was found to be emanating from the Russian embassy in London and the communications are believed to be in support of the Russian president.”

The NSA interception of the Russian leadership at G20 came hours after Obama and Medvedev had met for the first time. Relations between the two leaders had been smoothed in the runup to the summit with a series of phone calls and letters, with both men wanting to establish a trusting relationship to discuss the ongoing banking crisis and nuclear disarmament.

In the aftermath of their discussions on 1 April, the two men issued a joint communique saying they intended to “move further along the path of reducing and limiting strategic offensive arms in accordance with the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons”.

A White House official who briefed journalists described the meeting as “a very successful first meeting focused on real issues”. The official said it had been important for the men to be open about the issues on which they agreed and disagreed. Obama had stressed the need to be candid, the official noted.

While it has been widely known the two countries spy on each other, it is rare for either to be caught in the act; the latest disclosures will also be deeply embarrassing for the White House as Obama prepares to meet Vladimir Putin, who succeeded Medvedev as president, in the margins of the G8 summit this week.

The two countries have long complained about the extent of each other’s espionage activities, and tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats are common. A year after Obama met Medvedev, the US claimed it had broken a highly sophisticated spy ring that carried out “deep cover” assignments in the US.

Ten alleged Russian spies living in America were arrested.

Putin was withering of the FBI-led operation: “I see that your police have let themselves go and put some people in jail, but I guess that is their job. I hope the positive trend that we have seen develop in our bilateral relations recently will not be harmed by these events.” Last month, the Russians arrested an American in Moscow who they alleged was a CIA agent.

The new revelations underline the significance of RAF Menwith Hill and raise questions about its relationship to the British intelligence agencies, and who is responsible for overseeing it. The 560-acre site was leased to the Americans in 1954 and the NSA has had a large presence there since 1966.

It has often been described as the biggest surveillance and interception facility in the world, and has 33 distinct white “radomes” that house satellite dishes. A US base in all but name, it has British intelligence analysts seconded to work alongside NSA colleagues, though it is unclear how the two agencies obtain and share intelligence – and under whose legal authority they are working under.

Ewen MacAskill, Nick Davies, Nick Hopkins, Julian Borger and James Ball
The Guardian, Monday 17 June 2013

Find this story at 17 June 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Exclusive: phones were monitored and fake internet cafes set up to gather information from allies in London in 2009

Documents uncovered by the NSA whistleblower, Edward Snowden, reveal surveillance of G20 delegates’ emails and BlackBerrys. Photograph: Guardian

Foreign politicians and officials who took part in two G20 summit meetings in London in 2009 had their computers monitored and their phone calls intercepted on the instructions of their British government hosts, according to documents seen by the Guardian. Some delegates were tricked into using internet cafes which had been set up by British intelligence agencies to read their email traffic.

The revelation comes as Britain prepares to host another summit on Monday – for the G8 nations, all of whom attended the 2009 meetings which were the object of the systematic spying. It is likely to lead to some tension among visiting delegates who will want the prime minister to explain whether they were targets in 2009 and whether the exercise is to be repeated this week.

The disclosure raises new questions about the boundaries of surveillance by GCHQ and its American sister organisation, the National Security Agency, whose access to phone records and internet data has been defended as necessary in the fight against terrorism and serious crime. The G20 spying appears to have been organised for the more mundane purpose of securing an advantage in meetings. Named targets include long-standing allies such as South Africa and Turkey.

There have often been rumours of this kind of espionage at international conferences, but it is highly unusual for hard evidence to confirm it and spell out the detail. The evidence is contained in documents – classified as top secret – which were uncovered by the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and seen by the Guardian. They reveal that during G20 meetings in April and September 2009 GCHQ used what one document calls “ground-breaking intelligence capabilities” to intercept the communications of visiting delegations.

This included:

• Setting up internet cafes where they used an email interception programme and key-logging software to spy on delegates’ use of computers;

• Penetrating the security on delegates’ BlackBerrys to monitor their email messages and phone calls;

• Supplying 45 analysts with a live round-the-clock summary of who was phoning who at the summit;

• Targeting the Turkish finance minister and possibly 15 others in his party;

• Receiving reports from an NSA attempt to eavesdrop on the Russian leader, Dmitry Medvedev, as his phone calls passed through satellite links to Moscow.

The documents suggest that the operation was sanctioned in principle at a senior level in the government of the then prime minister, Gordon Brown, and that intelligence, including briefings for visiting delegates, was passed to British ministers.

A briefing paper dated 20 January 2009 records advice given by GCHQ officials to their director, Sir Iain Lobban, who was planning to meet the then foreign secretary, David Miliband. The officials summarised Brown’s aims for the meeting of G20 heads of state due to begin on 2 April, which was attempting to deal with the economic aftermath of the 2008 banking crisis. The briefing paper added: “The GCHQ intent is to ensure that intelligence relevant to HMG’s desired outcomes for its presidency of the G20 reaches customers at the right time and in a form which allows them to make full use of it.” Two documents explicitly refer to the intelligence product being passed to “ministers”.
One of the GCHQ documents. Photograph: Guardian

According to the material seen by the Guardian, GCHQ generated this product by attacking both the computers and the telephones of delegates.

One document refers to a tactic which was “used a lot in recent UK conference, eg G20”. The tactic, which is identified by an internal codeword which the Guardian is not revealing, is defined in an internal glossary as “active collection against an email account that acquires mail messages without removing them from the remote server”. A PowerPoint slide explains that this means “reading people’s email before/as they do”.

The same document also refers to GCHQ, MI6 and others setting up internet cafes which “were able to extract key logging info, providing creds for delegates, meaning we have sustained intelligence options against them even after conference has finished”. This appears to be a reference to acquiring delegates’ online login details.

Another document summarises a sustained campaign to penetrate South African computers, recording that they gained access to the network of their foreign ministry, “investigated phone lines used by High Commission in London” and “retrieved documents including briefings for South African delegates to G20 and G8 meetings”. (South Africa is a member of the G20 group and has observer status at G8 meetings.)
Another excerpt from the GCHQ documents. Photograph: Guardian

A detailed report records the efforts of the NSA’s intercept specialists at Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire to target and decode encrypted phone calls from London to Moscow which were made by the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, and other Russian delegates.

Other documents record apparently successful efforts to penetrate the security of BlackBerry smartphones: “New converged events capabilities against BlackBerry provided advance copies of G20 briefings to ministers … Diplomatic targets from all nations have an MO of using smartphones. Exploited this use at the G20 meetings last year.”

The operation appears to have run for at least six months. One document records that in March 2009 – the month before the heads of state meeting – GCHQ was working on an official requirement to “deliver a live dynamically updating graph of telephony call records for target G20 delegates … and continuing until G20 (2 April).”

Another document records that when G20 finance ministers met in London in September, GCHQ again took advantage of the occasion to spy on delegates, identifying the Turkish finance minister, Mehmet Simsek, as a target and listing 15 other junior ministers and officials in his delegation as “possible targets”. As with the other G20 spying, there is no suggestion that Simsek and his party were involved in any kind of criminal offence. The document explicitly records a political objective – “to establish Turkey’s position on agreements from the April London summit” and their “willingness (or not) to co-operate with the rest of the G20 nations”.

The September meeting of finance ministers was also the subject of a new technique to provide a live report on any telephone call made by delegates and to display all of the activity on a graphic which was projected on to the 15-sq-metre video wall of GCHQ’s operations centre as well as on to the screens of 45 specialist analysts who were monitoring the delegates.

“For the first time, analysts had a live picture of who was talking to who that updated constantly and automatically,” according to an internal review.

A second review implies that the analysts’ findings were being relayed rapidly to British representatives in the G20 meetings, a negotiating advantage of which their allies and opposite numbers may not have been aware: “In a live situation such as this, intelligence received may be used to influence events on the ground taking place just minutes or hours later. This means that it is not sufficient to mine call records afterwards – real-time tip-off is essential.”

In the week after the September meeting, a group of analysts sent an internal message to the GCHQ section which had organised this live monitoring: “Thank you very much for getting the application ready for the G20 finance meeting last weekend … The call records activity pilot was very successful and was well received as a current indicator of delegate activity …

“It proved useful to note which nation delegation was active during the moments before, during and after the summit. All in all, a very successful weekend with the delegation telephony plot.”

Ewen MacAskill, Nick Davies, Nick Hopkins, Julian Borger and James Ball
The Guardian, Monday 17 June 2013

Find this story at 17 June 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Intelligence services were even said to have set up internet cafés at the summit venues which they used to read emails

Britain was plunged into a diplomatic row last night following claims that foreign politicians and diplomats were repeatedly spied upon when they attended two G20 summit meetings in London.

The allegations provoked anger in Turkey, Russia and South Africa, whose dignitaries were reportedly targeted by the covert surveillance operations in 2009 while Gordon Brown was Prime Minister.

The intelligence services were even said to have set up internet cafés at the summit venues which they used to read emails sent by visiting officials.

David Cameron refused yesterday to comment on the allegations, which proved an embarrassing distraction for him as the leaders of G8 nations gathered for a two-day meeting at Lough Erne, Northern Ireland.

However, one British source said he was not surprised by the claims and said it was always assumed other delegations tried to listen in to other countries’ private discussions at international summits.

Turkey, up to 15 of whose officials could have been snooped on in London, spelt out its fury and contacted the UK’s ambassador to Ankara to demand an explanation. It described the report in the Guardian as “very worrying”, particularly as Turkey and Britain are both members of Nato.

“We want an official and satisfactory explanation,” said a spokesman for the Turkish foreign ministry. “If these allegations are true, this is going to be scandalous for the UK.

“At a time when international co-operation depends on mutual trust, respect and transparency, such behaviour by an allied country is unacceptable.”

Clayson Monyela, a spokesman for South Africa’s foreign ministry said in his twitter feed that the matter was “extremely disturbing” and was “receiving attention”.

He said Britain and South Africa had cordial relations and called on London to investigate the claims “with a view to take strong & visible action”.

Alexei Pushkov, the chief of foreign affairs committee in the lower house of Russian parliament, tweeted: “It’s a scandal! The U.S. and British special services tapped (then President Dmitry) Medvedev’s phone at the 2009 G-20 summit. The US denies it, but we can’t trust them.”

Sergei Devyatov, a spokesman for the Federal Protection Service, which provides security for Russian government officials, said in a statement: “The Federal Protective Service is taking every necessary measure to provide the appropriate level of confidentiality of information for top-ranking officials of the country.”

According to yesterday’s report, secret documents show that delegates to the two summits had their computers monitored and phones intercepted on the Government’s orders.

The Guardian said the leaked papers suggested the operation was sanctioned at a senior level in Mr Brown’s government. One briefing paper said the head of GCHQ was about to meet David Miliband, who was the Foreign Secretary at the time.

One former Brown aide told the Independent yesterday: “We always assumed that everyone else did it at such meetings. We were advised not to plug in our laptops, use photocopiers, wi-fi or our usual Blackberrys – we would be given a different one for the duration of a summit.

“Traditionally the French were always at it. Others joined in so as not to be at a disadvantage. It was about knowing the thinking in the other delegations. But usually it didn’t yield much that was very surprising. It was regarded as fair game because every government did the same. I don’t know if it ever extended from governments to civil society or the media, that would be different and much more sinister.”

Tackled about the reports, Mr Cameron said today: “We never comment on security or intelligence issues and I am not about to start now. I don’t make comments on security or intelligence issues – that would be breaking something that no government has previously done.”

David Miliband could not be contacted last night.

Nigel Morris, Andrew Grice
Tuesday, 18 June 2013

Find this story at 18 June 2013

© independent.co.uk

Top-secret document, prepared by GCHQ, contained proposals to target Commonwealth allies at heads of government summit

The Queen and Commonwealth leaders at the heads of government summit in Trinidad. Photograph: Luis Acosta/AFP/Getty Images

UK intelligence agencies planned to spy on delegates to the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in 2009, including being asked to obtain information to give UK ministers an advantage in talks with their Commonwealth counterparts, according to a top-secret document seen by the Guardian.

The meeting, which takes place every two years, was held in Trinidad in 2009. The UK delegation was headed by the Queen, with Prince Philip also in attendance, along with Gordon Brown, the then prime minister, David Miliband, then foreign secretary, and Douglas Alexander, then international development secretary.

A page from an internal top-secret intranet of GCHQ, shared with the NSA, discovered by the 29-year-old whistleblower Edward Snowden and seen by the Guardian, shows a list of “key intelligence requirements” set out for the summit.

Alongside notes to check for threats against the security of the UK delegation during the visit, the document lists “Intelligence to inform UK senior’s [sic] Bi-lats”, “Initelligence [sic] on South Africa’s views on Zimbabwe prior to Brown/Zuma meeting” and “climate change reporting”.

The revelation that UK intelligence agencies made plans to target ministers and officials from Commonwealth countries, as well as the targeting of G20 officials disclosed elsewhere, is likely to raise tensions among the Commonwealth nations, who may seek clarity over whether their officials were bugged, and if so to what extent.

The note, which was prepared in advance of the meeting, also sets out a schedule for different UK agencies to set up their activities in Trinidad. MI6 were tasked to set up several days before the event, with GCHQ’s operation beginning with the arrival of delegates. The Guardian is not publishing the original document as it contains logistical details and some limited references to personnel.

The 2009 Commonwealth meeting, which was also attended by Nicolas Sarkozy, then president of France, appears to have been the first time MI6 – formally known as SIS, or the Secret Intelligence Service – had been asked to gather intelligence from a Commonwealth heads of government gathering.

“SIS have no past history of targeting this meeting,” the document notes in an explanation of why operations might be limited in their scope.

As it was prepared in advance of the Commonwealth meeting, the memo does not confirm to what extent surveillance was carried out, or even whether planned operations actually took place.

However, it does stress to agency staff that “we will be measured on our ability to deliver”.

The memo also shows that the agencies were preparing to brief senior ministers, and the prime minister, during the conference.

The memo noted that Lady Kinnock was available for briefings from 25 to 29 November, David Miliband could be briefed from 26 to 29 November, and Gordon Brown on 29 November only.

There is no indication as to whether the briefings actually took place, or whether the ministers were aware of the security services’ plans for the summit.

Ewen MacAskill, Nick Davies, Nick Hopkins, Julian Borger and James Ball
The Guardian, Sunday 16 June 2013 20.47 BST

Find this story at 16 June 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.