James Ball over at the Guardian U.K. is reporting that British intelligence services can now access bulk raw materials collected by the NSA and other foreign surveillance agencies without a warrant. The U.K government has confirmed the report for the first time.
Privacy International, one of several advocacy groups mounting legal challenges against GCHQ and NSA surveillance, said the revelation should cast further doubts on legal safeguards in the UK.
“We now know that data from any call, internet search, or website you visited over the past two years could be stored in GCHQ’s database and analysed at will, all without a warrant to collect it in the first place,” said deputy director Eric King. “It is outrageous that the government thinks mass surveillance, justified by secret “arrangements” that allow for vast and unrestrained receipt and analysis of foreign intelligence material is lawful.”
In response to a joint legal challenge by Privacy International,
Liberty and Amnesty International to the
Investigatory Powers Tribunal, (the UK surveillance watchdog) GCHQ has revealed secret “arrangements” for accessing bulk material coordinated through the NSA. The legal action was a response to documents revealed by Edward Snowden and published by the Guardian and other news organizations last year.
The government's submission admits that the U.K can obtain “unselected” – meaning unanalyzed, or raw intelligence, (or information from overseas partners) without a warrant if it was “not technically feasible” to obtain the communications under a warrant. It can also obtain the data if it is “necessary and proportionate” for the intelligence agencies to obtain that information.
GCHQ views data without a warrant, government admits
The rules essentially permit bulk collection of material, which can include communications of UK citizens, provided the request does not amount to “deliberate circumvention” of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa), which governs much of the UK’s surveillance activities.
This point – that GCHQ does not regard warrants as necessary in all cases – is explicitly spelled out in the document. “[A] Ripa interception warrant is not as a matter of law required in all cases in which unanalysed intercepted communications might be sought from a foreign government,” it states. The rules also cover communications data sent unsolicited to the UK agencies.
Critics disagree, saying this contrasts with assurances by parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee in July last year that a warrant signed by a minister was in place whenever GCHQ obtained intelligence from the US. The data from American citizens can be stored up to two years, which is the same amount of time regular data is stored directly by the agency, and the storage time can be extended unilaterally if a senior official feels it is necessary (and proportionate) for national security reasons. Privacy International said the revelation should cast further doubts on legal safeguards in the UK.
“We now know that data from any call, internet search, or website you visited over the past two years could be stored in GCHQ’s database and analysed at will, all without a warrant to collect it in the first place,” said deputy director Eric King. “It is outrageous that the government thinks mass surveillance, justified by secret “arrangements” that allow for vast and unrestrained receipt and analysis of foreign intelligence material is lawful.”
Privacy International also stated that information obtained through these overseas “arrangements” was treated as if it were targeted surveillance, which removes a requirement under UK law not to search for UK citizens and residents in such data troves. This means that British citizens could also, in theory, be subject to warrantless monitoring by GCHQ.
Amnesty International and Liberty, the co-complainants in the IPT case, echoed Privacy International’s call for reform of surveillance safeguards.
“It is time the government comes clean on such crucial issues for people’s privacy as the sharing of communications intercepts with foreign governments,” said Amnesty International director of law and policy Mike Bostock. “Secret rules are woefully inadequate.”
James Welsh, legal director for Liberty added that the tribunal submissions directly contradicted previous public statements from the government.d
“The line the Government took at the hearing was that there were adequate safeguards, they just couldn’t be made public,” he said. “Leaving aside whether secret safeguards can ever be adequate, this reluctantly-made disclosure suggests otherwise.”
The collusion within the "Five Eyes" international spy organization is literally a threat to all free people... that is... if there are any left in this world.