GCHQ warns technology companies - but there is little sympathy from government for the technology companies.
Robert Hannigan, then director of GCHQ, fired a shot across the bows of us internet companies in 2014, warning them not to go too far to protect their customers’ data, in the face of terrorist threats such as Daesh.
Like it or not, he argued – in remarkably strong terms in a
newspaper article – US technology companies have “become the command and control networks of choice for terrorists and criminals”.
Bamford sees Hannigan’s comments as public support for the nsa’s lobbying to expand its data-gathering capabilities.
“I think that he was basically supporting the NSA’s position, which is that the NSA and GCHQ should be able to get access to that information whenever they want,” says Bamford.
It is perhaps not surprising that Hannigan should have spoken out so strongly, given the close working relationship between the two organisations. They are part of the Five Eyes network, a group that shares electronic intelligence with the US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand.
The NSA’s twin brother
The relationship between the NSA and GCHQ is far closer than the relationship between the NSA and the CIA, says Bamford. “The NSA and GCHQ are like twin brothers.”
And for good reason. GCHQ has access to all the satellites across Europe and the transatlantic cables which are a rich source of intelligence for the NSA.
When workers at GCHQ’s Cheltenham headquarters went on strike for a week (GCHQ strikes have since become illegal), the NSA took up the slack. And when the NSA’s Diirector, Michael Hayden, received a phone call alerting him that all the NSA’s computers had crashed in 2000, GCHQ stepped in to cover.
“General Michael Hayden was at home, around seven o’clock on a Sunday night, and the guy in charge of the operation centre called up and said, ‘All the computers have crashed.’ And Hayden said something like, ‘which one?’ He said, ‘All of them.’ And then they kept it a secret for about a week. That was a big deal,” says Bamford.
Pat and Louis – the antennas
Bamford has uncovered close financial links between the two organisations. In the early 1980s, for example, he obtained documents which showed the NSA had paid for two large antennas at GCHQ’s intelligence-gathering facility near Bude in Cornwall.
The then director of GCHQ was so grateful that he wrote to his counterpart at the NSA, Pat Carter, saying the dishes should be named “Pat”, after him, and “Louis”, after his deputy director, Louis Tordella.
“They talked about how ‘our employees are in bed with each other’ and ‘should we pull the sheets up tight’. But that’s the way it’s been – GCHQ people at NSA, and NSA out here in the UK,” he says.
The relationship between GCHQ, the NSA and the other Five Eyes partners is a complex one.
Bamford had sight of one document in the Snowden archive that showed that US policy is to honour its agreements with its collaborators only if it is convenient to do so.
“It was fascinating, because it stated in black and white that the US would honour its agreements with its partners – unless there is a reason not to,” says Bamford.
“So it made no sense. If one side can unilaterally go against the nature of the agreement, then there really isn’t an agreement, right?”
US citizens protected by law
While in theory there are laws to protect US citizens from being monitored by the NSA, there are few similar protections for UK, or other non-US, citizens.
“There is nothing at all legally, or any other way, preventing the NSA from eavesdropping on non-US citizens,” says Bamford.
If anything, GCHQ has fewer legal constraints than its larger counterpart, he says. “There are things that GCHQ does that I don’t think the NSA could get away with.”
German news magazine
Der Speigel, for example, exposed a “
dirty tricks” unit in GCHQ, dubbed My Networks Operations Centre (MYNOC). One of its tasks was to create fake LinkedIn pages, infected with malware.
It used them to target engineers working at the Belgian mobile phone company, Belgacom, opening up a gateway into the phone company’s networks, and its customers’ mobile phones for an extensive surveillance operation.
“That’s an area that I think would be a little beyond the pale for NSA. But for GCHQ and this organisation MYNOC, there’s almost no limit to what they do,” he says.
More recently, GCHQ has
admitted in court that it carries out Computer Network Exploitation (CNE) – in other words hacking – in the UK and overseas.
The agency has the ability to turn on microphones and cameras on electronic devices without the owner’s knowledge, identify a person’s location and to make copies of personal documents.
The projects have fanciful names, such as Nosey Smurf, which plants malware to turn on smartphone microphones; Dreamy Smurf, for switching on smartphones; and Paranoid Smurf, for hiding malware on mobile devices.
GCHQ told the court that the measures are proportionate, and conducted under strict legal safeguards. Opponents argue that the warrants are so broad they
could allow GCHQ to legally hack all the phones in a city.
Interview: James Bamford on surveillance, Snowden and technology companies - Computer Weekly
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