http://www.timesonl ine.co.uk/ tol/news/ politics/ article6211101. ece

May 3, 2009
Jacqui Smith's secret plan to carry on snooping

The home secretary has vowed to scrap a ‘big brother’ database, but a
bid to spy on us all continues

David Leppard and Chris Williams

SPY chiefs are pressing ahead with secret plans to monitor all
internet use and telephone calls in Britain despite an announcement by
Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, of a ministerial climbdown over
public surveillance.

GCHQ, the government’s eavesdropping centre, is developing classified
technology to intercept and monitor all e-mails, website visits and
social networking sessions in Britain. The agency will also be able to
track telephone calls made over the internet, as well as all phone
calls to land lines and mobiles.

The £1 billion snooping project — called Mastering the Internet (MTI)
— will rely on thousands of “black box” probes being covertly inserted
across online infrastructure.

The top-secret programme began to be implemented last year, but its
existence has been inadvertently disclosed through a GCHQ job
advertisement carried in the computer trade press.

Last week, in what appeared to be a concession to privacy campaigners,
Smith announced that she was ditching controversial plans for a single
“big brother” database to store centrally all communications data in
Britain.

“The government recognised the privacy implications of the move [and]
therefore does not propose to pursue this move,” she said.

Grabbing favourable headlines, Smith announced that up to £2 billion
of public money would instead be spent helping private internet and
telephone companies to retain information for up to 12 months in
separate databases.

However, she failed to mention that substantial additional sums —
amounting to more than £1 billion over three years — had already been
allocated to GCHQ for its MTI programme.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said Smith’s announcement
appeared to be a “smokescreen”.

“We opposed the big brother database because it gave the state direct
access to everybody’s communications. But this network of black boxes
achieves the same thing via the back door,” Chakrabarti said.

Informed sources have revealed that a £200m contract has been awarded
to Lockheed Martin, the American defence giant.

A second contract has been given to Detica, the British IT firm which
has close ties to the intelligence agencies.

The sources said Iain Lobban, the GCHQ director, is overseeing the
construction of a massive new complex inside the agency’s “doughnut”
headquarters on the outskirts of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.

A huge room of super-computers will help the agency to monitor — and
record — data passing through black-box probes placed at critical
traffic junctions with internet service providers and telephone
companies, allowing GCHQ to spy at will.

An industry insider, who has been briefed on GCHQ’s plans, said he
could not discuss the programme because he had signed the Official
Secrets Act. However, he admitted that the project would mark a step
change in the agency’s powers of surveillance.

At the moment the agency is able to use probes to monitor the content
of calls and e-mails sent by specific individuals who are the subject
of police or security service investigations.

Every interception must be authorised by a warrant signed by the home
secretary or a minister of equivalent rank.

The new GCHQ internet-monitoring network will shift the focus of the
surveillance state away from a few hundred targeted people to everyone
in the UK.

“Although the paper [work] does not say it, its clear implication is
that those kinds of probes should be extended to cover the entire
population for the purposes of monitoring communications data,” said
the industry source.

GCHQ placed an advertisement in the specialist IT press for a head of
major contracts to be given “operational responsibility for the
‘Mastering the Internet’ (MTI) contract”. The senior official, to be
paid an annual salary of up to £100,000, would lead the procurement of
the hardware and the analysis tools needed to build and run the
system.

Ministers have said they do not intend to snoop on the actual content
of e-mails or telephone calls. The monitoring will instead focus on
who an individual is communicating with or which websites and chat
rooms they are visiting.

Advocates of the black-box system say it is essential if the
authorities are to keep pace with the communications revolution. They
say terrorists are stateless, highly mobile and their communications
are difficult to detect among the billions of pieces of data passing
through the internet.

Last year about 14% of telephone calls were made using voice over
internet protocol (Voip) systems such as Skype. A report by a group of
privy counsellors predicts that most calls will be made via the
internet within five years. GCHQ said it did not want to discuss how
the data it gathered would be used.

http://www.dailymai l.co.uk/news/ article-1154902/ Terror-fight- means-end- privacy-Ex- security- chief-calls- snooping- powers.html
Terror fight 'means the end of privacy': Ex-security chief calls for
more snooping powers
By Tamara Cohen
Last updated at 9:01 AM on 25th February 2009

Farewell privacy: Sir David Omand says the Government needs Big
Brother powers

Personal data of innocent citizens must be made available to the
Government to combat terrorism, according to an influential former
security chief.

Sir David Omand, Whitehall's former and security and intelligence
coordinator, called for unprecedented Big Brother powers to allow
access to private details - including phone records, emails and travel
information - to be given to the intelligence services.

Setting out a hugely controversial blueprint for the future of
national security he said 'moral rules' about individual privacy
would have to be broken.

His 17-page report calls for the creation of a vast state database to
gather information about terrorist groups which are increasingly
recruiting and operating online.

But he argued that a citizen's right to privacy would have to be
sacrificed to allow 'intrusive' intelligence techniques.

'Finding out other people's secrets is going to involve breaking
everyday moral rules', he wrote.

'This is personal information about individuals that resides in
databases, such as advance passenger information, airline bookings and
other travel data, passport and biometric data, immigration, identity
and border records, criminal records,and other governmental and
private sector data, including financial and telephone and other
communications records.'

'Modern intelligence access will often involve intrusive methods of
surveillance and investigation, accepting that, in some respects, this
may have to be at the expense of some aspects of privacy rights.'

The paper 'National Security Strategy and Implication for the UK
Intelligence Community' was published last week by the influential New
Labour think tank, the Institute of Public Policy Research.

Sir Omand left the senior civil service in 2005 but his views still
hold great sway in the corridors of power.

He added: 'This is a hard choice and goes against current calls to
curb the so-called surveillance society - but it is greatly preferable
to tinkering with the rule of law, or derogating from fundamental
human rights.

'Being able to demonstrate proper legal authorisation and appropriate
oversight of the use of such intrusive intelligence activity may
become a major future issue for the intelligence community, if the
public at large is to be convinced of the desirability of such
intelligence capability'

Sir Omand said such information maybe held in national records,covered
by Data Protection legislation, but it might also be held offshore by
other nations or by global companies.

'Access to such information. ..might well be the key to effective
pre-emption in future terrorist cases.

'Such sources have always been accessible to traditional law
enforcement seeking evidence against a named suspect already justified
by reasonable suspicion of having committed a crime.'

'However, application of modern data mining and processing techniques
does involve examination of the innocent as well as the suspect to
identify patterns of interest for further investigation'

http://www.telegrap h.co.uk/news/ newstopics/ politics/ 5032994/One- in-four-governme nt-websites- illegal.html

One in four government websites illegal

One in four Government databases are illegal under human rights or
data protection and should be scrapped immediately, a panel of experts
have warned.

By Tom Whitehead, Home Affairs Editor
Last Updated: 5:50PM GMT 22 Mar 2009

Another six in ten have "significant problems and may be unlawful"
while just one in eight are given a clean bill of health.

The UK has become the "most invasive surveillance state, and the worst
at protecting privacy, of any Western democracy", the most detailed
study yet on data collection reveals.

Systems including the DNA database, National Identity Register, the
children's ContactPoint index and the NHS Detailed Care Record are
"fundamentally flawed", they conclude.

The scathing report says a quarter of public sector databases are
either disproportionate, run without consent, have no legal basis or
have major privacy or operational problems.

In a wide-ranging attack, it warns children are most at risk from
"Britain's Database State" and that data sharing is now creating a
barrier to socially responsible activities.

The report, commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, is the
first comprehensive review of Britain's major databases.

It will fuel fresh accusations that the Government is marching Britain
headfirst in to a surveillance society and personal data being readily
shared between public bodies or help snoop on the public with
virtually no control.

But the experts, specialists in information policy, revealed senior
civil servants and politicians now also see the personal data issue as
"career threatening and toxic".

One author, Professor Ross Anderson of Cambridge University, said:
"Britain's database state has become a financial, ethical and
administrative disaster which is penalising some of the most
vulnerable members of our society. It also wastes billions of pounds a
year and often damages service delivery rather than improving it.

"There must be urgent and radical change in the public-sector database
culture so that the state remains our servant, not our master, and
becomes competent to deliver appropriate public services that
genuinely support and protect the people who most need its help."

Another, Ian Brown of the Oxford Internet Institute, said:"The UK
needs information systems that support citizens and professionals on a
human scale, rather than multi-billion pound centralised databases
used to stigmatise and snoop."

The report, Database State, said the Government's obsession has left
officials "struggling to control billions of records of our most
personal details".

It said more than £16 billion a year is spent on public sector IT and
another £105bn will be spent over the next five years but less than a
third of such projects ever succeed.

It said there are thousands of databases operating and the Government
does not even now the precise number.

The study reviewed 46 flagship databases and found just six were
effective, proportionate and necessary.

Using a traffic light system, it gave 11 databases a red light,
meaning they are "almost certainly illegal under human rights or data
protection law and should be scrapped or substantially redesigned".

The "red" list includes the DNA database, which is already under
review after the European Court of Human Rights ruled the blanket
retention of samples of innocent people was a breach of their rights.

Others include the National Identity Register, which will store
personal information linked to ID cards, and ContactPoint, the planned
national index of all children in England.

Another 29 databases were found to be "amber" meaning they have
"significant problems and may be unlawful".

The report warns data is increasingly centralised and shared between
bodies but that the benefits of such sharing are often "illusory" and
can in fact harm the most vulnerable.

It said three of the largest databases set up to support and protect
children fail in their aims.

Co-author Terri Dowty of Action on Rights for Children said: "Children
have never been so weighed, measured, graded, monitored and discussed.
The state hovers over them like an over-anxious parent constantly
looking for problems, but this level of intrusion into children's
private and family lives simply cannot be justified on the basis of
good intentions."

The report said: "All aspects of our lives will be surrounded by
masses of data collected without our consent and shared well beyond
the purposes for which they were originally collected.

"Citizens are starting to realise this and are progressively losing
trust in Government."

Recommendations to address the problems include:

:: Respect for human rights and data protection, so that sensitive information is only shared with the subject's consent or subject to clearly-defined legal rules that are proportionate and necessary in a democratic society

:: The right for citizens to access most public services anonymously

:: Litigants bringing cases on human rights to be shielded from paying costs.

Shadow Justice Minister, Eleanor Laing said: "This damning report
documents the sea change in the relationship between the individual
citizen and the state in the last decade under this government.

"The Government must urgently adopt a principled, proportionate, less
centralised approach to collecting personal information that takes
real account of our privacy and is based on the consent of individuals
and families."

Phil Booth, National Coordinator of NO2ID campaign said: "This survey
shows just how vast the database state has grown while your back was
turned. It threatens the privacy, personal security and freedom of
everyone in the UK.

"Government now sees collecting and collating information about the
people as a primary function: snooping is the first resort. To stop
the database state, the surveillance reflex must be changed."