2
A Democratic Licence to Operate
0.5
The ISR Panel met with a broad range of organisations and individuals and held seventeen
evidence sessions. It received a number of submissions. A list of evidence can be found
in Annex B. A bibliography can be found at the end of the report.
0.6
The ISR Panel visited the three British security and intelligence agencies (SIAs – comprising
MI5, SIS and GCHQ), the National Crime Agency (NCA) and Metropolitan Police. We are
grateful to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and Home Office for their cooperation and assistance.
0.7
The ISR was initiated following the unlawful disclosure of classified information in
June 2013 by Edward Snowden, a US employee of contractors for the National Security
Agency (NSA). From documents provided by Snowden, it was reported that the NSA was
collecting the telephone records of US customers of Verizon, an American broadband and
telecommunications company. The order, granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Court, required Verizon on an ‘on-going, daily basis’ to give the NSA information on
all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other
countries.1 Approximately 58,000 documents also related to the UK Government
Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) which, it was also reported, tapped the fibreoptic cables that carry vast amounts of global communications. The government has,
with only a few exceptions, maintained its traditional line of neither confirming nor
denying matters relating to national security.
0.8
This report, A Democratic Licence to Operate, is one of several publications that have
followed these disclosures (we provide a brief overview of the relevant findings from
these reports in Chapter V). In October 2013, the Intelligence and Security Committee
of Parliament (ISC) announced that it would be broadening its inquiry into the laws
which govern the ability of intelligence agencies to intercept private communications,
to include work on the appropriate balance between individual rights to privacy and
collective rights to security. The ISC’s report was published in March 2015.
0.9
Following the announcement of the creation of the ISR led by RUSI, the government asked
David Anderson QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, to review the
legislation governing the use of communications data and interception, with particular
regard to the following issues:
•
•
•
•
•
1.
Current and future threats, capability requirements and the challenges of current
and future technologies
The safeguards to protect privacy
The implications for the legal framework of the changing global nature of
technology
The case for amending or replacing the legislation
The statistical and transparency requirements that should apply
Glenn Greenwald, ‘NSA Collecting Phone Records of Millions of Verizon Customers Daily’,
Guardian, 6 June 2013.