GCHQ Government Communications Headquarters. GCHQ was originally established after the First World War as the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) and was known under that name until 1946. During the Second World War it was located at Bletchley Park, where it was famed for its role in the breaking of the German Enigma codes. Currently there are two main components of the GCHQ, the Composite Signals Organisation (CSO), which is responsible for gathering information, and the CESG, which is responsible for securing the UK's own communications. The Joint Technical Language Service (JTLS) is a small department and cross-government resource responsible for mainly technical language support and translation and interpreting services across government departments. It is co-located with GCHQ for administrative purposes. In 2013, GCHQ received considerable media attention when NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the agency was attempting to collect all online and telephone data in the UK via the Tempora programme. 2000s[edit]
ThinThread. ThinThread is the name of a project that the United States National Security Agency (NSA) pursued during the 1990s, according to a May 17, 2006 article in The Baltimore Sun.[1] The program involved wiretapping and sophisticated analysis of the resulting data, but according to the article, the program was discontinued three weeks before the September 11, 2001 attacks due to the changes in priorities and the consolidation of U.S. intelligence authority.[2] The "change in priority" consisted of the decision made by the director of NSA General Michael V. Hayden to go with a concept called Trailblazer, despite the fact that ThinThread was a working prototype that protected the privacy of U.S. citizens.
ThinThread was dismissed and replaced by the Trailblazer Project, which lacked the privacy protections.[3] A consortium led by Science Applications International Corporation was awarded a $280 million contract to develop Trailblazer in 2002.[4] Whistleblowing[edit] Technical details[edit] Trailblazer Project. Trailblazer was a United States National Security Agency (NSA) program intended to develop a capability to analyze data carried on communications networks like the Internet. It was intended to track entities using communication methods such as cell phones and e-mail.[1][2] It ran over budget, failed to accomplish critical goals, and was cancelled. The people who filed the IG complaint were later raided by armed Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents. While the Government threatened to prosecute all who signed the IG report, it ultimately chose to pursue an NSA Senior Executive — Thomas Andrews Drake — who helped with the report internally to NSA and who had spoken with a reporter about the project.
Drake was later charged under the Espionage Act of 1917. Background[edit] In 2002 a consortium led by Science Applications International Corporation was chosen by the NSA to produce a technology demonstration platform in a contract worth $280 million. Whistleblowing[edit] See also[edit] Tempora. Tempora is a clandestine security electronic surveillance program tested in 2008,[2] established in 2011 and operated by the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).
Tempora uses intercepts on the fibre-optic cables that make up the backbone of the internet to gain access to large amounts of internet users' personal data. The intercepts are placed in the United Kingdom and overseas, with the knowledge of companies owning either the cables or landing stations.[3] The existence of Tempora was revealed by Edward Snowden, a former American intelligence contractor who leaked information about the program to former Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald in May 2013, as part of his revelations of government-sponsored mass surveillance programs.
Documents Snowden acquired claimed that data collected by the Tempora program is shared with the National Security Agency of the United States.[4] Operation[edit] GCHQ set up a three-year trial at the GCHQ Bude in Cornwall. [edit] Global Telecoms Exploitation. Global Telecoms Exploitation is reportedly a secret British telephonic mass surveillance programme run by GCHQ. Its existence was revealed in June 2013 in The Guardian newspaper by U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden during the 2013 NSA Leaks series of revelations, along with its sister program Mastering the Internet. [1][2] References[edit] See also[edit] Mastering the Internet. Mastering the Internet (MTI)[1][2] is a mass surveillance project led by the British communications intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), with a budget of over £1 billion. According to reports in The Register and The Sunday Times, as of early May 2009, contracts with a total value of £200m had already been awarded to suppliers.[3] [4] Responding to these reports, GCHQ issued a press release countering these claims of mass surveillance, stating that "GCHQ is not developing technology to enable the monitoring of all internet use and phone calls in Britain, or to target everyone in the UK".[5] However, the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures revealed that the GCHQ gathers “raw” information (without filtering out the communications of British citizens) from the web as part of its "Mastering the Internet" programme.[6] Background[edit] "Mastering the Internet" (MTI) is part of the Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP) of the British government.
Canada[edit] Interception Modernisation Programme. The Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP) is a UK government initiative to extend the government's capabilities for intercepting and storing communications data. It has been widely reported that the IMP's eventual goal is to store details of all UK communications data in a central database.[1] The proposal is similar to the NSA Call Database established by GCHQ's American counterpart NSA and the Titan traffic database established by the Swedish National Defence Radio Establishment. [citation needed] In 2008 plans were being made to collect data on all phone calls, emails, chatroom discussions and web-browsing habits as part of the IMP, thought likely to require the insertion of 'thousands' of black box probes into the country’s computer and telephone networks.[2] The proposals were expected to be included in the Communications Data Bill.
The Home Office has denied reports that a prototype of the IMP had already been built.[5] See also[edit] References[edit] External links[edit]