Spy agency ‘did not illegally use US data’

AFP/London

Britain’s electronic eavesdropping agency GCHQ did not bypass the law by using data from the secret US PRISM surveillance programme exposed by Edward Snowden, lawmakers said yesterday.

The parliament’s intelligence and security committee said a minister had signed off on a warrant for all of the agency’s requests for information from intelligence services in the US.

“It has been alleged that GCHQ circumvented UK law by using the NSA’s PRISM programme to access the content of private communications. From the evidence we have seen, we have concluded that this is unfounded,” the committee said in a report.

“We have reviewed the reports that GCHQ produced on the basis of intelligence sought from the US, and we are satisfied that they conformed with GCHQ’s statutory duties,” it added.

But the committee did recommend examining current laws on access to private communications to see if they were still “adequate”.

Foreign Secretary William Hague, whose ministry is in charge of GCHQ, welcomed the report. “The intelligence and security committee has cleared GCHQ of the allegations of illegal activity made against it. The committee has concluded that these allegations are ‘unfounded’. I welcome these findings,” he said.

GCHQ, which stands for Government Communications Headquarters and is based in a huge doughnut-shaped building in Cheltenham monitors communications worldwide for intelligence purposes.

Documents leaked by former US National Security Agency contractor Snowden were reported by the Guardian newspaper last month to show that GCHQ was using data harvested by PRISM. It also reported that GCHQ spied on foreign delegates at the G20 meeting in London in 2009.

The spying allegations have caused tensions with Britain’s partners in the European Union after allegations that the bloc had also been targeted by the PRISM programme. The parliamentary intelligence committee said it had taken “detailed evidence” from GCHQ including scrutiny of its arrangements with foreign intelligence agencies.

GCHQ had provided lawmakers with lists of counter-terror operations for which it obtained intelligence from the US, of British nationals who were monitored, of e-mail addresses for which details were requested, and of warrants for targeted individuals, the committee said.