counter-productive, he referred to what he called an “incestuous relationship”
between the NSA and large contractors employing ex-NSA personnel.171
3.75.
Two other witnesses with intelligence backgrounds contradicted the evidence of
Mr Binney:
(a) David Wells, a GCHQ intelligence officer from 2005 to 2013 who went on to
work for an Australian intelligence agency, drew an analogy with the Google
search engine, which he described as itself “in the business of bulk
collection”.172 He noted that the increase in data volume has been
accompanied by an improved ability to ask complex and nuanced questions:
the intelligent user, far from being overwhelmed by the comprehensive
Google dataset, can generally get an answer “on the first page, if not in the
top result”. In the same way:
“[W]hile intelligence agencies in the UK and elsewhere have access to
more communications data than ever before, by using focused queries
and data filters, intelligence analysts only need to retrieve and analyse
a small fraction of the overall dataset. As with Google, having more
data improves the quality of your results. Intelligence analysts can get
the data they need comparatively quickly and efficiently.”
This was not to reject the importance of targeted technical surveillance: on
the contrary, “analysis of bulk communications data and focused data
collection on ‘targets of interest’ serve different but complementary purposes”.
(b) Dr David Pepper, Director of GCHQ between 2003 and 2008, stated that Mr
Binney’s analysis was “misleading in the current UK context”. He considered
(like Mr Wells) that “the techniques we have developed over many years
allow for the effective collection of these large volumes and their targeted
analysis”, and stated that “Mr Binney’s proposed approach of targeted
collection would make it impossible to work backwards and outwards from
the discovery of a new threat to uncover the mesh of past and present
communications that reveal the structure of threat networks and the identity
of their members”.173
3.76.
171
172
173
The Review team questioned GCHQ about Mr Binney’s observations, and
received detailed briefing on the evolution of its selection techniques, analytic
techniques (tradecraft) and other methods of managing volume. The risks of
“drowning in data” are undeniable, and rightly recognised by all concerned. But
GCHQ showed us that it:
Written evidence to Joint Bill Committee, DIP0009 and IPB0161; oral evidence, QQ 234-249.
Written evidence to Joint Bill Committee, IPB0166.
Evidence to Public Bill Committee, April 2016, IPB71.
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