Photograph by Matt Wilson
The UK’s digital spying and eavesdropping agency GCHQ are due to report to MPs “within days” over claims that it was involved in gathering intelligence on British citizens from internet companies such as Google, Facebook, and Apple along with the US National Security Agency as part of its PRISM operation.
An investigation in The Guardian claims that GCHQ worked with the NSA in the US in gathering the data on the private digital communications of British citizens. GCHQ have responded in a statement saying that they operate within “a strict legal and policy framework”, with a full report due to Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee expected on Monday.
The Guardian claims that it has obtained documents that show that GCHQ has had access to the NSA’s Prism system since 2010, and that it appeared to allow the agency to circumvent the legal processes normally required for government agencies to acquire personal information of British citizens such as emails and photographs.
The Prism scandal broke on Friday, with leaked presentation slides allegedly showing NSA direct access to the personal data being held by internet companies such as Google and Facebook appearing in The Guardian and the Washington Post.
In the US, the NSA has attempted to quell fears that they are spying on US citizens by saying that they only used such techniques to spy on foreign nationals. This statement, however, has cause great consternation within Europe, as it appears to show that these internet companies are breaching European data protection laws. Many European countries, most notably Germany, has voiced fears that such practices were occurring previously with the Patriot Act in the US legalising such activities, but these slides are the first real evidence of such practices.
The internet companies involved which include Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, and Apple, have mostly used very broad language to deny that the NSA have “direct access” to their servers. However, the NSA and US government have not denied the reports.
