CHAPTER 7: PRACTICE
Government has stated that at least 58,000 “highly classified UK intelligence
documents” were among the documents stolen.4
7.7.
The principal allegations broadly concern:
(a)
Bulk collection of internet and international communications data;
(b)
Analytic tools enabling advanced searching of intercepted data;
(c)
Cooperative relationships between governments and service providers;
(d)
Methods for CNE; and
(e)
Intelligence sharing.
Some of these allegations are briefly summarised in Annex 7 to this Report.
7.8.
It is important to note that:
(a)
The British government has adopted an NCND approach to the allegations
contained in the Snowden Documents (other than the PRISM programme, the
existence of which has been acknowledged by the US government).5
(b)
Only a tiny (and not necessarily representative) proportion of the Snowden
Documents has been placed in the public domain.
The completeness and veracity of what has been revealed is therefore uncertain.
7.9.
Nothing in this Report should be taken as confirmation by me that the Snowden
Documents (or any of them) give a fair or representative view of the activities of
GCHQ. Nor should I be taken to condone the activities of Edward Snowden.
7.10.
But I have considered it important to refer to the allegations, because:
4
5
(a)
it would be entirely artificial, and corrode public confidence in this Review, to
proceed as if the disclosures had never been made or could be politely ignored;
and because
(b)
whether or not a true and fair picture is given by the limited selection of
published documents and slides, it is clearly prudent to construct a regulatory
system on the basis that programmes of the type described in these documents
either exist or might in the future do so.
Deputy National Security Adviser Oliver Robbins, cited in “David Miranda row: Seized files endanger
‘agents’”, BBC website, 30 August 2013.
As can be seen from the Charles Farr Statement, para 41.
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