UK Gov't Tries And Fails To Hide Details Of GHCQ/Telecoms Tapping Fiber Lines

from the it-all-comes-out-eventually dept

Tue, Jun 3rd 2014 11:05am — Mike Masnick

Apparently, the UK government worked very hard to get the Guardian and others not to publish certain details about how GCHQ (and NSA) tap certain underwater cables that connect the internet around the globe, as it turns out that they get lots of help from BT and Vodafone Cable (via its purchase of Cable & Wireless). Those two companies apparently get paid handsomely for helping the government tap into these undersea cables. The Register decided it doesn't quite care how much the UK government doesn't want this stuff published, and went ahead and did so anyway:

British national telco BT, referred to within GCHQ and the American NSA under the ultra-classified codename “REMEDY”, and Vodafone Cable (which owns the former Cable & Wireless company, aka “GERONTIC”) are the two top earners of secret GCHQ payments running into tens of millions of pounds annually.

The actual locations of such codenamed “access points” into the worldwide cable backbone are classified 3 levels above Top Secret and labelled “Strap 3”. The true identities of the companies hidden behind codenames such as “REMEDY”, “GERONTIC”, “STREETCAR” or “PINNAGE” are classified one level below this, at “Strap 2”.

After these details were withheld, the government opted not to move against the Guardian newspaper last year for publishing above-top-secret information at the lower level designated “Strap 1”. This included details of the billion-pound interception storage system, Project TEMPORA, which were revealed in 2013 and which have triggered Parliamentary enquiries in Britain and Europe, and cases at the European Court of Human Rights. The Guardian was forced to destroy hard drives of leaked information to prevent political embarrassment over extensive commercial arrangements with these and other telecommunications companies who have secretly agreed to tap their own and their customers’ or partners’ overseas cables for the intelligence agency GCHQ. Intelligence chiefs also wished to conceal the identities of countries helping GCHQ and its US partner the NSA by sharing information or providing facilities.

There are also some details about how the UK government authorized the tapping in secret (of course), and suggests that the powers are exceptionally broad (because, of course they are):

Although GCHQ interception of overseas communications can be authorised by a general “external” tapping warrant, the wording of the law does not permit storage of every communication for examination, as GCHQ wished to do. In 2009, the spooks persuaded then Foreign Secretary David Miliband to sign a new warrant legalising what they wished to do. The terms of such warrants have never been published.

The special “external” warrants, issued under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), authorise the interception of all communications on specified international links. Miliband’s first 2009 warrant for TEMPORA authorised GCHQ to collect information about the “political intentions of foreign powers”, terrorism, proliferation, mercenaries and private military companies, and serious financial fraud.

Certificates attached to external interception warrants are re-issued every six months, and can be changed by ministers at will. GCHQ officials are then free to target anyone who is overseas or communicating from overseas without further checks or controls, if they think they fall within the terms of a current certificate.

The article also details how a special team at BT will help GCHQ figure out how to tap cables without others knowing about them:

The GCHQ-contracted companies also install optical fibre taps or “probes” into equipment belonging to other companies without their knowledge or consent.... Snowden’s leaks reveal that every time GCHQ wanted to tap a new international optical fibre cable, engineers from “REMEDY” (BT) would usually be called in to plan where the taps or “probe” would physically be connected to incoming optical fibre cables, and to agree how much BT should be paid.

Considering that The Register claims that not publishing this information is what kept the UK government from taking The Guardian to court, it will be interesting to see how they react to The Reg's decision to publish. The article also has a lot more details about the GCHQ using a top secret base in Oman to capture all of this undersea cable traffic as well, which I would imagine is a big part of what the government had hoped to keep secret. The stuff about the big telco and cable companies helping tap undersea fiber cables (and getting paid for it) doesn't seem particularly surprising at all. It's been known for years that AT&T has done that for the US government, so it's not clear why anyone felt the need to keep the equivalent so secret in the UK.

Either way, it seems like all of these efforts to keep certain aspects of these stories secret eventually fail. And the "top secret" stuff gets revealed one way or another eventually anyway. That doesn't mean that indiscriminate disclosure necessarily makes sense (though some of you will likely disagree), but it should make people realize that there needs to be very good reasons for keeping certain information secret, or it will almost certainly be disclosed eventually.

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Filed Under: fiber, gchq, journalism, nsa, oman, surveillance, tapping, uk, uk government, undersea cables
Companies: bt, the register, vodafone cable

13 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 3 Jun 2014 @ 11:30am

and yet Rifkin reckoned there was nothing illegal going on at GCHQ! i think this shows that he is just as entrenched in what has been/is going on as those in the actual building itself. is it any wonder that the people on both sides of the Atlantic are fed up to the teeth with being spied on? if there were any terrorist activity, surely they would do whatever is necessary to cover their tracks. they wouldn't be pissing about with something like gmail! so why is it that all us ordinary people get tracked from arse hole to breakfast and they get away with what they are doing? simple answer is that the various governmental spy agencies dont have to put any effort in to watching us! as for BT and Vodafone, i can see a lot of itchy feet under customers here. they are being paid a fortune for giving customers data and privacy away and it still isn't enough. they have to increase prices every couple of months! i think privacy is worth more than what some BT big noise is selling it for, in fact, i think it's priceless!!
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Jun 2014 @ 11:45am

Indiscriminate secrecy only bolsters the position of those who advocate indiscriminate disclosure
By needlessly marking as "secret" material that is publicly known or would reasonably be suspected by the public at large, the government diminishes the perceived value marking material as "secret." The harder they try to keep material needlessly secret, the less likely people will believe them when they insist that certain information really needs to be secret. For example, fifteen years ago, pleading "state secret" / "national security" probably would have persuaded most people that something needed to be confidential. Now, "national security" is so distorted and meaningless that my first thought is usually to translate it to "national embarrassment" and assume that it can be safely disclosed without hurting anyone.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Jun 2014 @ 12:12pm

Good on The Reg.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Jun 2014 @ 1:13pm

Sometimes I wish that I did live in a galaxy far, far away.
SPY WARS
Episode X
THE GREAT COVERUP
It is a period of "terrorist war".
Rebel whistle-blowers, striking from within have won their first victory against the evil Government Empire.
During his work, a rebel whistle-blower managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the NSL, a piece of paper with enough power to secretly wiretap an entire planet.
Pursued by the Empire's sinister agents, Rebel Snowden (and here is where we diverge a bit)is stuck in a foreign country, no longer custodian of the stolen plans that can save his people and restore freedom to the planet....
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Coyne Tibbets (profile), 3 Jun 2014 @ 3:55pm

Keeping secrets
Rex Stout wrote, "You should know that your only safe secrets are those you have yourself forgotten."

So true. The agencies have gotten away with murder (literally, in some cases) for ever so long. Now, in this new age of computer surveillance, they are finding their secrets revealed, just as they reveal those of everyone else.

It is nothing but conceit that leads these agencies to think they can keep any of these secrets forever.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Jun 2014 @ 9:56pm

The register has done a great service........and im almost pissed off the other sources did not release this, even so

All or nothing, these cunts dont need deserve to be protected
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Jun 2014 @ 9:57pm

Re:
The spy agencies
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Angelo, 3 Jun 2014 @ 10:37pm

Richard Nixon
was a president way before his time...
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Jun 2014 @ 10:47pm

Gotta tap'em all!
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Anonymous Coward, 4 Jun 2014 @ 4:26am

Cat is out of the bag. Surprise.

3 million people with top secret clearances in USA alone. The real question is why Russians and Chinese are so quiet on this?
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robertsgt40 (profile), 4 Jun 2014 @ 10:16am

Re:
People understand, this massive state spying has nothing to do with protecting us against "terra". It has everything to do with squashing those who question what their state is doing to them.
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GEMont (profile), 4 Jun 2014 @ 11:49am

"so it's not clear why anyone felt the need to keep the equivalent so secret in the UK."

jerks have knees
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Angelo, 4 Jun 2014 @ 10:21pm

Re:
I suppose they have their own spy agenda's. Looks to me like the cold war hasn't actually ended; it has simply been moved a few notches sideways and given a new name.
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