Leaked Memos Reveal GCHQ Efforts to Keep Mass Surveillance Secret !
- The UK GCHQ is really just a part of the Luciferian Global Surveillance Police State. GCHQ, NSA … are all part of the one and the same Beast ‘666’ System. Viewing them separately as a UK or US system will lead you into the wrong rabbit hole. The Illuminists in control at the top are one and the same! These are western Illuminist intelligence agencies!
- Leaked memos reveal GCHQ efforts to keep mass surveillance secret!
by James Ball, The Guardian
Exclusive: Edward Snowden papers show UK spy agency fears legal challenge if scale of surveillance is made public
–
The UK intelligence agency GCHQ has repeatedly warned it fears a “damaging public debate” on the scale of its activities because it could lead to legal challenges against its mass-surveillance programmes, classified internal documents reveal.
–
Memos contained in the cache disclosed by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden detail the agency’s long fight against making intercept evidence admissible as evidence in criminal trials – a policy supported by all three major political parties, but ultimately defeated by the UK’s intelligence community.
–
Foremost among the reasons was a desire to minimise the potential for challenges against the agency’s large-scale interception programmes, rather than any intrinsic threat to security, the documents show.
–
The papers also reveal that:
–
• GCHQ lobbied furiously to keep secret the fact that telecoms firms had gone “well beyond” what they were legally required to do to help intelligence agencies’ mass interception of communications, both in the UK and overseas.
–
• GCHQ feared a legal challenge under the right to privacy in the Human Rights Act if evidence of its surveillance methods became admissible in court.
–
• GCHQ assisted the Home Office in lining up sympathetic people to help with “press handling”, including the Liberal Democrat peer and former intelligence services commissioner Lord Carlile, who this week criticised the Guardian for its coverage of mass surveillance by GCHQ and America’s National Security Agency.
–
The most recent attempt to make intelligence gathered from intercepts admissible in court, proposed by the last Labour government, was finally stymied by GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 in 2009.
–
A briefing memo prepared for the board of GCHQ shortly before the decision was made public revealed that one reason the agency was keen to quash the proposals was the fear that even passing references to its wide-reaching surveillance powers could start a “damaging” public debate.
–
Referring to the decision to publish the report on intercept as evidence without classification, it noted: “Our main concern is that references to agency practices (ie the scale of interception and deletion) could lead to damaging public debate which might lead to legal challenges against the current regime.” A later update, from May 2012, set out further perceived “risks” of making intercepts admissible, including “the damage to partner relationships if sensitive information were accidentally released in open court”. It also noted that the “scale of interception and retention required would be fairly likely to be challenged on Article 8 (Right to Privacy) grounds”.
–
read more!
end