NSA Provided £100m Funding For GCHQ Operations 143
cold fjord writes "The Telegraph reports, 'GCHQ has received at least £100 million from the U.S. to help fund intelligence gathering, raising questions over American influence on the British agencies. ... It also emerged that the intelligence agency wants the ability to "exploit any phone, anywhere, any time" and that some staff have raised concerns over the "morality and ethics" of their operational work. ... The agency has faced claims it was handed intelligence on individuals from the US gained from the Prism programme that collected telephone and web records. However, it has been cleared of any wrongdoing or attempts to circumvent British law by the parliamentary intelligence and security committee, as well as by Mr Hague. The payments from the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) are detailed in GCHQ's annual "investment portfolios", leaked by Mr Snowden to The Guardian. The NSA paid GCHQ £22.9million in 2009, £39.9million in 2010 and £34.7million in 2011/12. ...Another £15.5million went towards redevelopment projects at GCHQ's site in Bude, Cornwall, which intercepts communications from the transatlantic cables that carry internet traffic. ... A Cabinet Office spokesman said: "In a 60-year alliance it is entirely unsurprising that there are joint projects in which resources and expertise are pooled, but the benefits flow in both directions."'"
dryriver also wrote in with news that several telecoms are collaborating with GHCQ (BT, Vodafone, and Verizon at least). From the article: "GCHQ has the ability to tap cables carrying both internet data and phone calls. 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. ... Documents seen by the Guardian suggest some telecoms companies allowed GCHQ to access cables which they did not themselves own or operate, but only operated a landing station for. Such practices could raise alarm among other cable providers who do not co-operate with GCHQ programmes that their facilities are being used by the intelligence agency."
Fourth Amendment (Score:5, Interesting)
The 4th amendment says that people have a right to be secure against unreasonable searches.
This simple prohibition has no context - the fact that someone else (a foreign government, a corporation, another citizen) gives the information to the government doesn't matter. It's still a violation, the fourth amendment makes no distinction for how the government gets the data.
The fact that the legislature passed a law saying that they can doesn't matter, and the fact that the executive branch says that they can doesn't matter either. The executive branch cannot and must not be the ones to judge the legality of their actions - that would be tyranny.
Determining whether something is legal is, and always has been, the purview of the judicial branch. In cases of ambiguity or differing interpretations, there is always the option of bringing it to the supreme court.
Many legal scholars count the government's actions as illegal, and a common-sense reading of the fourth amendment seems to agree.
I wish the people who keep repeating that the government hasn't broken any laws would shut up - they're giving tyranny a measure of respectability just by saying that. I also wish people who don't care about their own privacy would shut up - many people do care, and since you don't care there is nothing to be gained by arguing... or even voicing your position.
If you think what the government is doing is OK, please STFU and let people bring the issue to the supreme court. If you're correct, then it won't matter and you shouldn't object to raising the question. There's no honourable reason to argue against verification.
Nothing new here (Score:4, Interesting)
Between the two world wars the precursor to GCHQ, the Government Code & Cypher School, and various earlier organisations were tapped into international telegraph lines/carriers (e.g. in the UK and Malta) in order to obtain copies of diplomatic traffic. The British companies acquiesced to this with little coercion and the US companies took a little more convincing but eventually complied. There's nothing much new here, only the scale has changed.
Raising questions ? (Score:5, Interesting)
I find it strange that this is a question that still need to be asked. Maybe that is because I'm living in Europe, but for years I have the feeling the American influence on Great Britain is big in everything. So big that I personally see the British politicians as some kind of American trojan horse within Europe.
Some europeans even joke that it isn't a country anymore, but the 51st state of the US. Really in all honesty, this article doesn't surprise me one bit.
Re:Is this really true? (Score:5, Interesting)
If enough of the voting American people saw the problem and agreed to vote for a third party, perhaps a third party whose only platform was to change the laws to allow non-republicrats easier access to power in future, then that would be it.
What I am about to say I say often on here:
When you vote for the lesser of two evils, you are still voting to increase evil.
Many people dont get it, and will try to rationalize the most common excuse. The sad thing is that such excuses are so trivially destroyed by the obvious: Even if it were true that voting a 3rd party is "wasting" your vote, that is still not as bad as voting to increase evil.
In the end there can be no excuse for willingly and knowingly voting to increase evil. Really. No excuse at all.
"Voting 3rd party is wasting your vote" is the official platform of both of the major parties. No surprise there.