In an exclusive story at The Independent new details of the NSA/GCHQ's surveillance programs used against The Middle East have emerged.
There are lots of little tidbits about undersea cables (remember all those mysterious severing of cables back in 2008?), data centers, satellites and Top Secret wiki-style pages:
Britain runs a secret internet-monitoring station in the Middle East to intercept and process vast quantities of emails, telephone calls and web traffic on behalf of Western intelligence agencies, The Independent has learnt.
The station is able to tap into and extract data from the underwater fibre-optic cables passing through the region.
The information is then processed for intelligence and passed to GCHQ in Cheltenham and shared with the National Security Agency (NSA) in the United States. The Government claims the station is a key element in the West’s “war on terror” and provides a vital “early warning” system for potential attacks around the world.
The story seems to imply that the story is based off of Snowden documents, even the title screams that. The problem is that no newspapers working with Snowden documents have actually detailed any information about Middle East operations. Plus a little fact that Snowden has not worked with The Indendent at all. Which brings the question of... Who is leaking to the Independent? Is it The UK government itself? Snowden
speaks:
I have never spoken with, worked with, or provided any journalistic materials to the Independent. The journalists I have worked with have, at my request, been judicious and careful in ensuring that the only things disclosed are what the public should know but that does not place any person in danger. People at all levels of society up to and including the President of the United States have recognized the contribution of these careful disclosures to a necessary public debate, and we are proud of this record.
"It appears that the UK government is now seeking to create an appearance that the Guardian and Washington Post's disclosures are harmful, and they are doing so by intentionally leaking harmful information to The Independent and attributing it to others. The UK government should explain the reasoning behind this decision to disclose information that, were it released by a private citizen, they would argue is a criminal act."
Will the UK be as quick to investigate these leaks to The Independent as they are to accuse Miranda of terrorism?
The disclosure comes as the Metropolitan Police announced it was launching a terrorism investigation into material found on the computer of David Miranda, the Brazilian partner of The Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald – who is at the centre of the Snowden controversy.
Scotland Yard said material examined so far from the computer of Mr Miranda was “highly sensitive”, the disclosure of which “could put lives at risk”.
This detail also struck me, this one being that the programs are not used just for 'terrorism':
The certificate authorised GCHQ to collect information about the “political intentions of foreign powers”, terrorism, proliferation, mercenaries and private military companies, and serious financial fraud.
Intelligence sources have denied the aim is a blanket gathering of all communications, insisting the operation is targeted at security, terror and organized crime.
Anyhow, I am not the greatest Diary writer on these matters as we should all know by now, but am quite interested in seeing the discussion that goes on in the comments. Thoughts?