NSA Worked Out Deal With GCHQ To Spy On UK Citizens, Secretly Expanded It
from the funny-how-that-works dept
Early on in the Snowden leaks, it became clear that the NSA and its UK equivalent, GCHQ, had a very close relationship, sharing lots of data with each other. We noted a convenient potential byproduct of this collaboration: while, technically speaking, NSA isn't supposed to spy on Americans and GCHQ isn't supposed to spy in UK citizens, if they spy on the others' citizens and then share the results, they can get around that loophole. In response to that, the NSA, GCHQ and the three other signals intelligence agencies that make up the so-called "Five Eyes" surveillance collaboration between the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, suggested that they had "minimization" procedures in place not to actually spy on "non-target" citizens of each members' countries.But, of course, that's not what's actually happening. The latest Snowden document published by The Guardian reveals two important, but related things. First, the GCHQ and the NSA worked out a deal to let the NSA spy much more broadly on UK citizens, allowing them to build a database of previously "restricted" materials on UK citizens. Second, the NSA appears to have taken this small opening by the GCHQ to spy on the UK citizens under certain circumstances and massively expanded it, without telling GCHQ.
The document, titled 'Collection, Processing and Dissemination of Allied Communications', has separate classifications from paragraph to paragraph. Some are cleared to be shared with America's allies, while others – marked "NF", for No Foreign – are to be kept strictly within the agency. The NSA refers to its Five-Eyes partners as "second party" countries.Basically, GCHQ agreed to share more data on UK persons under the understanding that it wouldn't be abused, and the NSA took the opportunity to tell NSA folks "feel free to abuse it" so long as you can claim "it's in the best interests of the US." And they didn't let anyone in the UK know about that part. In other parts of the document -- which are shared with the Five Eyes partners, the NSA makes it sound like it will work collaboratively with those agencies when it comes up with important terrorist/criminal information.
The memo states that the Five-Eyes agreement "has evolved to include a common understanding that both governments will not target each other's citizens/persons".
But the next sentence – classified as not to be shared with foreign partners – states that governments "reserved the right" to conduct intelligence operations against each other's citizens "when it is in the best interests of each nation".
"Therefore," the draft memo continues, "under certain circumstances, it may be advisable and allowable to target second party persons and second party communications systems unilaterally, when it is in the best interests of the US and necessary for US national security."
Of course, you also have to assume that this original deal was not one-sided. It almost certainly involved the NSA telling GCHQ that it could also collect data and "unminimize" information it collected on US persons as well. And, it wouldn't be surprising to find out that the GCHQ has similar procedures in place that give it "for the good of the UK" exceptions to whatever limits the NSA tried to place on such data.
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Filed Under: five eyes, gchq, minimization, nsa, uk, unminimize, us
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Yeah, problem is their definition of "persons" really means "citizens",
Just because a lot of people have gotten a lot of easy money off teh internets doesn't make it a plus overall: at the very least, the Internet enables spying on scale and in detail as never before.
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Re: Yeah, problem is their definition of "persons" really means "citizens",
Quick, get your tinfoil hat on to protect your malformed cerebral cortex from teh googlez spy rays!
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Do not assume anything of the sort
You should not assume any such thing. The UK has a history of rolling over and letting the Septics have whatever they want with nothing asked in return.
Check the 2003 Extradition Treaty for example. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK%E2%80%93US_extradition_treaty_of_2003
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What it boils down to is not being able to trust our governments or our allies.
A serious look at the mental health of our government members is needed.
This whole thing is just made of corruption upon corruption.
time to clean house.
And we the people should not let them do it themselves.
Light the torches, lets go root out Frankenstein.
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Re:
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Transparency
It means transparency for the organizations for your data but none for the people's lives it affects.
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Then NSA and GCHQ give each other access to their data bases, bypassing all laws and regulations.
Not that laws matter at all to the NSA. US has no legal data sharing agreement with Israel, yet illegally hands over "unminimized" information on US citizens to Israel anyways.
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What makes you think that the UK would care? I mean other than being jealous that the NSA gets to spy on British citizens more than they do.
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Re:
If ye really want to show the world how right and righteous you are, you should contact the FBI - er... I mean the World Terrorist Bad Guys Organization - WTBGO (pronounced "White Boy Go") for short, at www.wtbgo.org immediately, cuz they really love guys/gals with your sort of self righteous mental disorder. They'll get you your very own truck fulla bombs and set you up for a big front page display of your pious self scrifice too.
BTW: Yer not related to Homer J. are you??
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