Report: Britain Has a Secret Middle East Web Surveillance Base

wiredmikey writes "Britain is running a secret Internet surveillance station in the Middle East, according to a recent report citing the latest leaked documents obtained by fugitive US security contractor Edward Snowden. The Independent newspaper said it was not disclosing the country where the base is located, but said the facility can intercept emails, telephone calls and web traffic for the United States and other intelligence agencies and taps into underwater fibre-optic cables in the region, the newspaper said. The Independent did not disclose how it obtained the details from the Snowden files."

Comments

Yes, and?

[Lawrence_Bird]

that is what they are supposed to be doing right? Gathering intel? The problem is when they do it against their own citizens.

Re:Yes, and?

[msobkow]

Ah, but you're missing the key point on how the "game" is played.

The GCHQ in the UK isn't allowed to spy on UK citizens, so they spy on the rest of the EU's citizens, and apparently on the Middle East.

The NSA isn't allowed to spy on US citizens, so they spy on Canadians and others.

The Canadian spy agency isn't allowed to spy on Canadians, so it spies on Americans and others.

Australia and New Zealand spy on anyone close to their networks as well.

Even the Germans are into spying.

Then after everyone has spied on the "foreigners" who aren't protected by each nation's laws, they get together, exchange their data, and end up with the intel on their own citizens, all while claiming "but we don't spy on our own citizens."

Re:Yes, and?

[AHuxley]

The problem with the UK and its secret surveillance stations is in the political power it gives the host country.
Land, power, guards, a local cover story was once all post colonial joy or NATO like anti Soviet deals, training and some basic intel sharing.
eg Cold war Sweden got some airborne elint but no UK/US like sharing/resources.
The problem with the local "citizens" is once the locals find out the steps the local rulers/politicians/military have to take to keep the secret again.
Britain's Embassy in Peking was looted by "protesters" in 1967 and lost its Rockex cypher equipment.
Iran, Ethiopia and Turkey (via TPLA and TPLF) where often at issue to further UK/US sites in the ~1960's (and other sites later during the Cold War).
ie the Cld War offered sigint facilities extreme secrecy.
Now nations offer other types of sites just to show how thankful they are:
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/cia-black-sites-lithuania/story?id=9400744
http://www.thejournal.ie/british-papers-reveal-interrogation-centre-in-derry-1023719-Aug2013/
"Secret British papers reveal secret 1970s interrogation centre in Derry"
Sites have many uses and can become news again years later. "subject to deep interrogation under the five techniques system the European Commission has called ‘torture’"

Re:Yes, and?

[chill]

Snowden gave the trove of files to The Guardian at least. The specific leaks, after the initial ones, are decided by Glenn Greenwald and not Snowden.

Whether Greenwald gave some stuff to the Independent or Snowden did that earlier is unknown.

But my guess would be the whole episode of the UK Gov't detaining Mr. Miranda and forcing The Guarding to shred some systems seriously pissed off the British Press. Releasing UK-specific material is most likely payback. Spreading it around to other papers is most likely a signal that "threaten the Guardian with prior restraint, you better be ready to shut down every paper in the UK".

GCHQ and Whitehall fucked up royally with that and they are now going to pay for threatening a major newspaper.

Just a guess, mind you.

Re:Yes, and?

[Above]

I'm thinking this may well be a middle finger aimed at the political types in the UK who had Greenwald's partner detained. It's his way of saying, this may have been about civil liberties and constitutional protections for your own citizens, but if you're going to mess with people on our side we can mess with people on your side too. A shot across their bow to give them some idea of the other information he has that he can chose to publish about, or keep secret.

Re:Yes, and?

[Anonymous Coward]

You may be right. From the linked article....

"But there are fears in Government that Mr Greenwald – who still has access to the files – could attempt to release damaging information.

He said after the arrest of Mr Miranda: “I will be far more aggressive in my reporting from now. I am going to publish many more documents. I have many more documents on England’s spy system. I think they will be sorry for what they did.”"

Re:Yes, and?

[FuzzNugget]

Right, they all spy on each other's citizens then exchange data, which amounts to exactly the same thing. Honoring the letter and shitting on the spirit seems to a trend these days.

And by the NSA's own logic, exchanging data is "two or three degrees of separation," which apparently should make them equally liable. Not that government hypocrisy surprises me in the least.

Re:Yes, and?

[six025]

Whether Greenwald gave some stuff to the Independent or Snowden did that earlier is unknown.

But my guess would be the whole episode of the UK Gov't detaining Mr. Miranda and forcing The Guarding to shred some systems seriously pissed off the British Press. Releasing UK-specific material is most likely payback. Spreading it around to other papers is most likely a signal that "threaten the Guardian with prior restraint, you better be ready to shut down every paper in the UK".

GCHQ and Whitehall fucked up royally with that and they are now going to pay for threatening a major newspaper.

Just a guess, mind you.

Rather telling is that a) the story appears in the Independent and b) article makes no reference as to the source of the allegations, other than stating that the information was found in the documents leaked by Edward Snowden:

Information about the project was contained in 50,000 GCHQ documents that Mr Snowden downloaded during 2012. Many of them came from an internal Wikipedia-style information site called GC-Wiki. Unlike the public Wikipedia, GCHQ’s wiki was generally classified Top Secret or above.

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.

Prior to this story most UK articles appeared in the Guardian and clearly stated that Glenn Greewald provided the information. The game has changed, and I think it is going to get a whole lot uglier from here.

Peace,
Andy.

Re:Yes, and?

[six025]

And I should add: huge kudos to the Independent for having the balls to stand up and keep reporting in the face of what appears to be a War on Journalism.

Peace,
Andy.

Re:Yes, and?

[icebike]

But my guess would be the whole episode of the UK Gov't detaining Mr. Miranda and forcing The Guarding to shred some systems seriously pissed off the British Press. Releasing UK-specific material is most likely payback. Spreading it around to other papers is most likely a signal that "threaten the Guardian with prior restraint, you better be ready to shut down every paper in the UK". GCHQ and Whitehall fucked up royally with that and they are now going to pay for threatening a major newspaper.

Just a guess, mind you.

Yeah, and it wouldn't bee too hard to figure out where this secret location is either.
You could just pick likely places from here: http://www.telegeography.com/telecom-resources/submarine-cable-landing-directory/
Gibraltar would be a good guess.

Re:Yes, and?

[grcumb]

Why ?

Does the UK need to spy on the middle east ?

The British Empire of the past is OVER. The UK is just a formerly great power which is sinking into oblivion by its own greed, incompetence, arrogance, sense of entitlement, and stupidity.

Er, the UK is home to one of the most important financial centres on the planet. It's got a huge (commercial and strategic) incentive to know what other countries are doing. And it's not just spying on the Middle East - it's spying in the Middle East on all the Europe-Asia traffic that passes through the Suez Canal. Which is pretty much all of the Europe-Asia traffic there is (Russia excepted).

And you can rest assured that at least some of the US$100 million that the NSA gives GCHQ is being used to maintain these facilities. Draw what conclusions you like.

Re:Yes, and?

[rapiddescent]

For the more visually inclined, a graphical map.

And based on that, I'll give dollars to doughnuts that it's Egypt. Virtually all traffic between Europe and Asia transits through the Suez canal.

I'd agree with this analysis because there were some massive interuptions with middle eastern internet comms when the SEA-ME-WE_4 cable was apparently snagged by ships at anchor of Alexandria. Interestingly, Egypt actually arrested 3 men for cutting though cable off Alexandria in March this year. makes you wonder what they were actually doing.

Remember all those times the cables were cut?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now we know why.

Re:news worthy?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I guess it is if you live in the middle east... but as an American this unlike the purly domestic shit is exactly what the NSA and allied signal intelligence agencies should be doing.

GCHQ decided to fuck with The Guardian and with Greenwald's partner.

Greenwald said "If the UK and U.S. governments believe that tactics like this are going to deter or intimidate us in any way from continuing to report aggressively on what these documents reveal, they are beyond deluded. If anything, it will have only the opposite effect: to embolden us even further."

A little story about a probably-sensitive GCHQ listening post seems like a warning shot in exactly that direction.

Re:Well..

[c0lo]

As a British citizen, I'm so used to assuming that the government is intercepting every piece of electronic communication,

As one that lived more than half of his life in one of those European countries in the communist block, I am afraid that you are properly fucked already.
If this persist for longer (say 15-20 years... it only takes one generation of used to, everybody will be teaching it to their children!), the society you'll be living would show the same weird behaviour of its people as during the secret police in communist countries: use of paraphrases when speaking, carefully planning/doing your everyday actions so that they don't appear to have any element of verboten, every neighbour... heck even members of you family... may be turning you to the authorities.
Walk only a little in the past and you'll find Gestapo as another example.

My point is: stop being just so used to... and do something if you don't want there

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

If there is any group of people constantly on the edge of going on killing sprees on civilians, it's the muslims.

You have conveniently overlooked the Israelis and the US, with respect to
killings of civilians. The facts indicate that the two aforementioned parties
certainly deserve to be counted as contenders in these matters.

Re:Actually that's completely and fantastically wr

[msobkow]

Uhunh. Yeah. Right. So all the "bi-lateral security agreements" that the government has bragged about are for what purpose, then?

Your NSA has been caught ignoring the rulings of the FISC that said their actions were illegal. They've been caught spying on Americans. What in all that's holy makes you think they wouldn't take data from a foreign government's spy agency when the Americans have repeatedly sent people to foreign nations to be tortured and to use that intelligence data despite the fact that it's illegal to do so?

Re:"...not disclosing....where the base is located

[SpockLogic]

The UK have sovereign bases on Cyprus, about 150 miles wet of Lebanon, and having a listening post on the top of the islands highest mountain shouldn't be difficult.

Your own link proves otherwise

[Camael]

Did you even check the source/link you posted?

The very first entry as of now, is Bush Secretly Lifted Some Limits on Spying in U.S. After 9/11, Officials Say

Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.

Nearly a dozen current and former officials, who were granted anonymity because of the classified nature of the program, discussed it with reporters for The New York Times because of their concerns about the operation's legality and oversight.

So much for your comment that

'The United States cannot target a foreigner to intercept the communications of one of its own citizens, nor can it use a second party nation (UK, CAN, AUS, or NZ), or anyone else, to target US citizens or anyone else it would be otherwise prohibited from targeting.'

They've moved beyond that, they're targetting citizens directly, without warrants, i.e. illegally.