GCHQ STATEMENT OF UTILITY OF BULK CAPABILITIES
(supplied to the Review July 2016)
GCHQ would not be able to identify those who wish us harm without bulk powers.
Terrorists, child abusers, drug traffickers, weapons smugglers and other serious
criminals choose to hide in the darkest places on the internet. GCHQ uses its bulk
powers to access the internet at scale so as then to dissect it with surgical precision.
By drawing out fragments of intelligence from each of the bulk powers and fitting
them together like a jigsaw, GCHQ is able to find new threats to the UK and our way
of life; to track those who seek to do us harm, and to help disrupt them.
•
Bulk Interception: Interception provides valuable information that allows us to
discover new threats; it also provides unique intelligence about the plans and
intentions of current targets – through interception of the content of their
communications. Communications data obtained through bulk interception is
also crucial to GCHQ’s ability to protect the UK against cyber-attack from our
most savvy adversaries and to track them down in the vast morass of the
internet.
•
Bulk Acquisition of Communications Data: Together with communications
data obtained through bulk interception, this power is the primary way in which
GCHQ discovers new threats to the UK. Without it, these threats would develop
to fruition undetected until it was too late to stop them.
•
Bulk Equipment Interference: The increasing use of encryption and diversity of
communications methods means that bulk EI is of growing importance. It can
enable GCHQ to “overcome techniques used by targets to hide their identities or
their communications”. “CNE can be a critical tool in investigations into the full
range of threats to the UK from terrorism, serious and organised crime and other
national security threats. For example, CNE enables the state to obtain the
valuable intelligence it needs to protect its citizens from individuals involved in
terrorist attack planning, kidnapping, espionage or serious organised
criminality.”262
•
Bulk Personal Datasets: GCHQ uses bulk personal datasets in conjunction
with other powers to identify new targets and to enrich our knowledge of existing
targets – for example, by confirming their identity, or discovering new connections
and networks.
What follows is a more detailed breakdown of the utility of each power by activity type
and operational area.
262
The quotations are taken from the first witness statement of Ciaran Martin, dated 16 November
2015, in Privacy International v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and
GCHQ [2016] UKIPTrib 14_85-CH, para 26. [DA to check para no. of first quote]
152