The NSA is not alone

The NSA's style of broad surveillance is not limited to the U.S.  In fact, the NSA is in partnership with foreign intelligence services to collect data.  The Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), based in Cheltenham, England, is the UK government agency for signals intelligence activities.  According to Ewen MacAskill, this agency is partnered with the NSA to gather and share “vast streams of sensitive personal information” (MacAskill 1).  Britain is in the unique position of hosting one end of many of the transatlantic fiber-optic cables that carry telephone and internet traffic between America and Europe (MacAskill 21).  Through an operation code-named Tempora, GCHQ has tapped these cables and stored content and metadata from the communications that pass through.  The collection does not distinguish between suspects and innocent people (MacAskill 5). 

The Tempora operation has been pulling in so much data that the GCHQ cannot handle all of it.  Therefore, they have shared the work with analysts from the NSA.  What is troubling is that in the legal guidance given to the American analysts, they were told “We have a light oversight regime compared with the US” (MacAskill 13).  That is, the Constitutional guarantees of privacy for American citizens, and Congressional oversight of intelligence gathering, don’t apply to this work done for the GCHQ.  The concern here is that, although the NSA traditionally does not spy on American citizens, GCHQ can do so and then share its information with the NSA.  Likewise, Brits may be concerned that the NSA could use Prism and other tools to gather information on them, and then that information can be shared with British authorities.  At this time, it is not clear whether this sort of cooperation between the intelligence agencies is happening.

The international reaction to this news is still developing.  People of other European countries have reacted with great concern and even outrage to the news of these surveillance programs.  According to Steven Erlanger, writing for The New York Times, nations that once lived under fascist or Communist dictatorships still mistrust governments (Erlanger 4). Therefore current German law “has strict limits and parliamentary oversight over the intelligence services” (Erlanger 6).  Germans expect that their personal online activities remain private.  The people are understandably upset that U.S. and British intelligence agencies have been secretly gathering and analyzing information about these activities.

 

Works cited:

Erlanger, Steven, and Jack Ewing. "Differing Views on Privacy Shape Europe’s Response to U.S. Surveillance Program." Nytimes.com. The New York Times, 14 June 2013. Web. 23 June 2013.

Macaskill, Ewen, Julian Borger, Nick Hopkins, Nick Davies, and James Ball "GCHQ Taps Fibre-optic Cables for Secret Access to World's Communications." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 21 June 2013. Web. 23 June 2013.