{"id":50208,"date":"2014-11-24T12:00:52","date_gmt":"2014-11-24T12:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=50208"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:27:17","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:27:17","slug":"vodafone-linked-company-aided-british-mass-surveillance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/11\/vodafone-linked-company-aided-british-mass-surveillance\/","title":{"rendered":"Vodafone-Linked Company Aided British Mass Surveillance"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo:<\/a>

Photo: PeterJDH\/Flickr<\/p><\/div>\n

They flow deep underneath the Atlantic Ocean and into the United Kingdom below the golden sands of idyllic beaches. But the internet cables that come ashore at\u00a0the coast of Cornwall, England, are not just used to connect the country with the rest of the world.<\/p>\n

According to new reports based on documents from National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, the cables have become an integral part of the global mass surveillance system operated by the British spy agency Government Communications Headquarters, intimately assisted by a company now owned by Vodafone<\/a>, the world\u2019s third largest cellphone network provider.<\/p>\n

The latest details about the extent of the spying were revealed on Thursday [20 Nov 2014 by the British Channel 4 News<\/a>, the German newspaper S\u00fcddeutsche Zeitung<\/a>, <\/em>and the German broadcaster WDR<\/a>, that worked in partnership with Intercept<\/em> founding editor Laura Poitras.\u00a0The Intercept<\/em> obtained a preview of the revelations in advance of their publication.<\/p>\n

According to the reports, British telecommunications firms have helped GCHQ dramatically scale-up the volume\u00a0of internet data it collects from undersea cables. In the five years leading up to 2012, there was a 7,000-fold increase in the amount of data the agency was sweeping up, with its computers monitoring some 46 billion private communications \u201cevents\u201d every day, according to documents cited in the reports. The data swept up from the cables would include content from emails, online messages, browsing sessions, and calls made using internet chat tools.<\/p>\n

British telecommunications company Cable & Wireless played a leading role in the secret cable tapping operation, according to the reports, and the collaboration appears to have gone further than simply complying with the law in helping implement the surveillance.<\/p>\n

The company provided GCHQ with updates on opportunities it could give the agency to tap into internet traffic, and in February 2009 a GCHQ employee was assigned to work within Cable & Wireless in a \u201cfull-time project management\u201d role. The British government paid Cable &\u00a0Wireless more than \u00a35 million ($9 million) of taxpayers\u2019 money as part of an annual lease for GCHQ to access the\u00a0cables. The agency described the company a \u201cpartner\u201d and designated it the codename Gerontic.<\/p>\n

According to the reports, Cable & Wireless also appears to have helped GCHQ obtain data from a rival foreign communications company, India\u2019s Reliance Communications<\/a>, enabling the spies to sweep up communications sent by millions of internet users worldwide through a Reliance-owned cable that stretches from England across Asia and the Middle East. This so-called \u201caccess point\u201d for GCHQ was named Nigella and located near an agency surveillance base in Bude, Cornwall (pictured above). Reliance did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

In July 2012, the multinational phone company Vodafone bought Cable & Wireless for about $1.5 billion. The documents indicate that the Nigella surveillance access point remained active as of April 2013.<\/p>\n

Vodafone said in a statement that it complies with the law and does not give \u201cdirect access\u201d to its cables. The company says it is compelled to provide certain access to data based on warrants issued by the government.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are processes for us to do that [comply with warrants] which we\u2019re not allowed to talk about because the law constrains us from revealing these things,\u201d said Vodafone spokesman Matt Peacock in a statement to Channel 4 News. \u201cWe don\u2019t go beyond what the law requires.\u201d<\/p>\n

GCHQ declined to comment, saying in statement that \u201cwe do not comment on intelligence matters\u201d and that \u201call of GCHQ\u2019s work is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework, which ensures that our activities are authorized, necessary and proportionate.\u201d<\/p>\n

____________________________<\/p>\n

Email the author: ryan.gallagher@theintercept.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 firstlook.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to the reports, British telecommunications firms have helped GCHQ dramatically scale-up the volume of internet data it collects from undersea cables. In the five years leading up to 2012, there was a 7,000-fold increase in the amount of data the agency was sweeping up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whistleblowing-surveillance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50208\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}