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Tempora

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The Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) operates "Tempora"[1]

Tempora is, according to The Guardian newspaper, a clandestine security electronic surveillance program trialled in 2008,[2] established in 2011 and operated by the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). It was revealed by American whistleblower Edward Snowden in May 2013 as part of his revelations of government sponsored mass surveillance programs. Snowden said that data collected by the Tempora programme is shared with the National Security Agency of the United States.[3]

Operation

According to Snowden the two principal components of Tempora are called "Mastering the Internet" and "Global Telecoms Exploitation", the aim of each to collate as much online and telephone traffic as possible.[3] The vast volume of data utilised by GCHQ in Tempora is extracted from over 200 fibre-optic cables and processed; full data is preserved for three days while metadata is kept for 30 days.[1] British officials have claimed that GCHQ produces larger amounts of metadata than the NSA. By May 2012 300 GCHQ analysts and 250 NSA analysts had been assigned to sift through the flood of data.[3] About 850,000 people have security clearance to access the data.[1]

The Guardian reports that no distinction is made in the gathering of the data between innocent people or targeted suspects.[3] The scope of Tempora includes recordings of telephone calls, the content of email messages, Facebook entries and the personal internet history of users. Snowden said of Tempora that "It's not just a U.S. problem. The UK has a huge dog in this fight...They [GCHQ] are worse than the U.S."[3]

Tempora was possible only with secret agreements with commercial companies, that were described in GCHQ documents as "intercept partners". Some companies have been paid for the cost of their co-operation. GCHQ staff were urged to disguise the origin of material in their reports for fear that the role of the companies as intercept partners would cause "high-level political fallout".[3] The companies are forbidden from revealing the existence of warrants compelling them to allow GCHQ access to the cables. If the companies fail to comply they can be compelled to do so.[3]

Lawyers for GCHQ said it would be impossible to list the total number of people targeted by Tempora because "this would be an infinite list which we couldn't manage".[3]

GCHQ set up a three year trial at the GCHQ Bude in Cornwall. GCHQ had probes attached to more than 200 internet links by Summer 2011, each probe carried 10 gigabits of data a second.[3] NSA analysts were brought into the trials, and Tempora was launched in Autumn 2011, with data shared with the NSA. Content collected by Tempora was stored for three days, and metadata stored for 30. Ongoing technical work is expanding GCHQ's capacity to collect data from new super cables that carry data at 100 gigabits a second.[3]

Reactions

UK Defence officials issued a confidential DA-Notice to the BBC and other media asking the media to refrain from running further stories related to surveillance leaks including US PRISM programme and the British involvement therein.[4][5]

The US Army has restricted its employees' access to the Guardian website since the beginning of the NSA leaks of PRISM and Tempora "in order to prevent an unauthorized disclosure of classified information."[6]

German Federal Minister of Justice Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger tweeted that she considered the program an "alptraum" ("nightmare") and demanded that European institutions investigate the matter.[7][8]

Jan Philipp Albrecht, German Member of the European Parliament and spokesperson for Justice and Home Affairs of the Greens/EFA parliamentary group, called for an infringement procedure against the United Kingdom for having violated its obligations relating to the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data under Article 16 of the Treaties of the European Union.[9]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c Philip Bump (June 21, 2013). "The UK Tempora Program Captures Vast Amounts of Data — and Shares with NSA". The Atlantic Wire. Retrieved June 23, 2013.
  2. ^ Shubber, Kadhim. "A simple guide to GCHQ's internet surveillance programme Tempora". Wired.com. Retrieved 2013-06-25.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Ewen MacAskill; Julian Borger; Nick Hopkins; Nick Davies; James Ball (June 21, 2013). "GCHQ taps fibre-optic cables for secret access to world's communications". The Guardian. Retrieved June 21, 2013.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  4. ^ Staines, Paul. "D-Notice, June 7, 2013". Retrieved 08-06-2013. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  5. ^ Halliday, Josh. "MoD serves news outlets with D notice over surveillance leaks". The Guardian. Retrieved 27-06-2013. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  6. ^ Phillip Molnar (2013-06-28). "Restricted web access to The Guardian is Armywide, officials say". Monterey Herald. Retrieved 2013-06-28.
  7. ^ Politik (2013-06-22). "''Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger: Justizministerin entsetzt über britisches Abhörprogramm''" (in German). spiegel.de. Retrieved 2013-07-03.
  8. ^ "Twitter / sls_bmj: #sls "#Tempora Alptraum a la". Twitter.com. Retrieved 2013-07-03.
  9. ^ "Amerikanischer als die Amerikaner". jetzt.de (Süddeutsche). 2013-06-23.
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