This kinda makes me really uneasy...
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/gchq-gets-us-spy-data-from-google-and-facebook-8649914.htmlBritain's electronic eavesdropping agency GCHQ has been covertly gathering information from leading internet companies through a secret US spy programme, it was reported today.
The Guardian said that it had obtained documents showing that GCHQ had access to the Prism system, set up by America's National Security Agency (NSA), since at least June 2010.
The documents were said to show that the British agency, based at Cheltenham, had generated 197 intelligence reports through the system in the 12 months to May 2012 - a 137 per cent increase on the previous year.
The newspaper said that the Prism programme appeared to allow GCHQ to circumvent the formal legal process required to obtain personal material, such as emails, photographs and videos, from internet companies based outside the UK.
GCHQ refused to comment directly on the report, but in a statement it insisted that it operated within a "strict legal and policy framework".
"GCHQ takes its obligations under the law very seriously," the statement said.
"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."
The existence of the Prism system was disclosed in earlier reports by The Guardian and The Washington Post.
It followed the disclosure by The Guardian of a secret court order requiring the US telecoms company Verizon to turn over the telephone records of millions of US customers.
Details of the Prism system were said to have been set out in a 41-page PowerPoint presentation prepared for senior analysts at the NSA, the biggest electronic eavesdropping organisation in the world.
It is said to give the NSA and the FBI easy access to the systems of nine of the world's top internet companies, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo and Skype.
It was said to have been established in 2007 under changes to US surveillance laws passed under President George Bush and renewed last year under Barack Obama in order to provide in depth surveillance on live communications and stored information on foreigners overseas.
According to the leaked document, "special programmes for GCHQ exist for focused Prism processing" - suggesting the British agency may have been receiving material from a part of the programme specifically designed to meet its needs.
MPs expressed concern at the report. Senior Tory David Davis said it was difficult to reconcile GCHQ's statement that it was subject to proper scrutiny with the fact that Parliament had no knowledge of the programme whatsoever.
"In the absence of parliamentary knowledge approval by a secretary of state is a process of authorisation, not a process of holding to account. Since nobody knew it was happening at all there is no possibility of complaint," he said.
"No review will be conducted by the two commissioners; the Interception of Communications Commissioner and the Intelligence Services Commissioner. Furthermore since it is outside the normal remit of UK intelligence it is hard to see how the Intelligence and Security Committee would have the resources or access to ensure the NSA behaved appropriately."
Liberal Democrat Julian Huppert, a member of the Commons Home Affairs Committee, said he hoped to force the Government to respond to an urgent question on the issue in Parliament on Monday.
"There are a lot of questions that need to be asked. I plan to table a whole series of questions and raise the issue in Parliament on Monday," he said.
"We have to understand exactly what information they have had and what the safeguards are. It's deeply, deeply alarming."
Nick Pickles of the civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch said questions needed to be asked at the "highest levels" to establish whether British citizens had had their privacy breached "without adherence to the proper legal process or any suspicion of wrongdoing".
"There are legal processes to request information about British citizens using American services and if they are being circumvented by using these NSA spying arrangements then that would be a very serious issue," he said.
Topic: British agency using US spy data from google, facebook, apple etc (Read 238 times)