CHAPTER 10: INTELLIGENCE
resonance with the argument made by law enforcement in relation to the
retention of domestic communications data. The Agencies may begin with a
small clue – perhaps a phone number, a suspect location - and from it they can
build up the links that will provide the intelligence needed.16 But they can only
do this if they have the communications material available to search for the
links.
(b)
Secondly, the Agencies’ ability to understand what communications bearers will
be used by subjects of interest overseas is limited and their ability to access
those channels is not guaranteed. Subjects of interest are very likely to use
many different means of communications and may change them frequently,
some doing so to frustrate their being surveilled. So where a communications
channel can be accessed and it is likely to carry communications of interest,
the Agencies will make the case to the Foreign Secretary for a warrant to
intercept that channel in bulk. This does not however provide the capability to
access anything like the totality of internet traffic.
10.23. The Agencies reject the argument that this bulk collection amounts to mass
surveillance. This is supported by the findings of the IOCC,17 the IPT,18 and most
recently the ISC:
“Our Inquiry has shown that the Agencies do not have the legal authority, the
resources, the technical capability, or the desire to intercept every
communication of British citizens, or of the Internet as a whole: GCHQ are not
reading the emails of everyone in the UK.”19
10.24. Looking to the future, the Agencies also anticipate that domestic security work will
increasingly rely on the use of bulk data, including the examination of communications
data within the UK. The spread of encryption and the multiplicity of identities used
online by individuals mean that the kind of target search and discovery familiar from
overseas operations will be needed in the domestic sphere. They make the point that
the internet knows no geographic boundaries and a suspect may be hidden within it
as easily in Britain as anywhere else.
10.25. In many respects the use of communications collected in bulk is another aspect to the
Agencies’ use of other bulk data, which has been openly discussed for the first time
in the ISC Privacy and Security Report.20 Bulk data are available to the Agencies
under SSA 1989 and ISA 1994, and exemptions in DPA 1998. As the Chief of MI6
recently put it:
“Using data appropriately and proportionately offers us a priceless opportunity
to be even more deliberate and targeted in what we do, and so to be better at
protecting … this country.”21
16
17
18
19
20
21
GCHQ explained this in “How does an analyst catch a terrorist?”: 7.5 above.
IOCC, Report for 2013, 6.5.38.
Liberty IPT Case, judgment of 5 December 2014.
ISC Privacy and Security Report, Key Findings.
ISC Privacy and Security Report, chapter 7.
The Chief’s speech to English Heritage, March 2015, MI6 website.
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