NSA pays £100m in secret funding for GCHQ

Source;  TheGuardian Exclusive

• Secret payments revealed in leaks by Edward Snowden
• GCHQ expected to 'pull its weight' for Americans
• Weaker regulation of British spies 'a selling point' for NSA

There's an aspect to this story that is under-emphasized in The Guardian's coverage.

GCHQ is a British Spy Agency (that's not the "aspect"). 

• The US government has paid at least £100m to the UK spy agency GCHQ over the last three years to secure access to and influence over Britain's intelligence gathering programmes.
  
  The top secret payments are set out in documents which make clear that the Americans expect a return on the investment, and that GCHQ has to work hard to meet their demands. "GCHQ must pull its weight and be seen to pull its weight," a GCHQ strategy briefing said.
  
  The funding underlines the closeness of the relationship between GCHQ and its US equivalent, the National Security Agency. But it will raise fears about the hold Washington has over the UK's biggest and most important intelligence agency, and whether Britain's dependency on the NSA has become too great.

You'll notice the last paragraph, that the NSA has a "hold" Washington has over the UK's biggest and most important intellegence agency, and concerns  in the UK that "Britain's depdency on the NSA" is too great.

The "aspect" being underplayed here by The Guardian story is what's going in the USA with regard to GCHQ's ties to the NSA.   

The NSA is paying GCHQ because the British spy agency is not subject to American laws, and can spy on the Americans without any sort of checks on it by American law! (and vice versa ).

The Guardian further indicates:

• In one revealing document from 2010, GCHQ acknowledged that the US had "raised a number of issues with regards to meeting NSA's minimum expectations". It said GCHQ "still remains short of the full NSA ask".
  
  Ministers have denied that GCHQ does the NSA's "dirty work", but in the documents GCHQ describes Britain's surveillance laws and regulatory regime as a "selling point" for the Americans.
  

Snowden warned about the relationship between the NSA and GCHQ, saying the organisations have been jointly responsible for developing techniques that allow the mass harvesting and analysis of internet traffic. "It's not just a US problem," he said. "They are worse than the US."

As well as the payments, the documents seen by the Guardian reveal:

• GCHQ is pouring money into efforts to gather personal information from mobile phones and apps, and has said it wants to be able to "exploit any phone, anywhere, any time".

• Some GCHQ staff working on one sensitive programme expressed concern about "the morality and ethics of their operational work, particularly given the level of deception involved".

• The amount of personal data available to GCHQ from internet and mobile traffic has increased by 7,000% in the past five years – but 60% of all Britain's refined intelligence still appears to come from the NSA.

• GCHQ blames China and Russia for the vast majority of cyber-attacks against the UK and is now working with the NSA to provide the British and US militaries with a cyberwarfare capability.

The Guardian Indicates:

• The papers show the NSA pays half the costs of one of the UK's main eavesdropping capabilities in Cyprus. In turn, GCHQ has to take the American view into account when deciding what to prioritise.

Anyone feeling less inclined to condemn Snowden  as a traitor for what he's revealed?

I think I waited too long in the OP to get to the "punch line".


What this article shows about the NSA's actions, is actually far worse than the CIA in Benghazi.

What the NSA is doing is actually contracting with another country, Britain, in order to bypass our United States laws, and do what it cannot do under the law anyway.

Quote from: Trip on August 03, 2013, 01:29:28 AM

I think I waited too long in the OP to get to the "punch line".


What this article shows about the NSA's actions, is actually far worse than the CIA in Benghazi.

What the NSA is doing is actually contracting with another country, Britain, in order to bypass our United States laws, and do what it cannot do under the law anyway.

So in other words, the NSA is entering into a conspiracy with another body, with the express intent to commit a criminal offense.

Why am I not in the least bit surprised?

After all it's not like their boss hasn't himself been involved in a few of those himself or anything.

Thing I don't get is why they have to pay them. Simple straight up trade, any information they have on US citizens for any information we have on British subjects. Shouldn't we be doing that anyway, with all of our allies?

Quote from: mdgiles on August 03, 2013, 05:09:32 AM
Thing I don't get is why they have to pay them. Simple straight up trade, any information they have on US citizens for any information we have on British subjects. Shouldn't we be doing that anyway, with all of our allies?

The problem is that it's not "any information" they're getting. It's "every information" - every bit of data, a police state.

There was a time in this country where we recognized that hearing something like this from our  police or government, would be entirely unacceptable:

"Ihre papiere bitte!"   (*Your papers, please!)

Now they're not even asking; they're just taking every bit of our information, and giving themselves authority to violate a full 80% of the Bill of Rights at their whim, simply by virtue of having written a health care law, with more demands to come at the mere "deeming" whim of the Secretary of Health and Human Services!

Quote from: Trip on August 03, 2013, 05:21:05 AM
The problem is that it's not "any information" they're getting. It's "every information" - every bit of data, a police state.

There was a time in this country where we recognized that hearing something like this from our  police or government, would be entirely unacceptable:

"Ihre papiere bitte!"   (*Your papers, please!)

Now they're not even asking; they're just taking every bit of our information, and giving themselves authority to violate a full 80% of the Bill of Rights at their whim, simply by virtue of having written a health care law, with more demands to come at the mere "deeming" whim of the Secretary of Health and Human Services!

Uh this isn't about Health Care, it's about a deal our spy agency made with their spy agency. What bother's me is the US subsidizing the other spy agency. That Britain would spy on everyone not British is understood, that's what countries do. But they should be more than willing to pass on information to an ally. We shouldn't have to bribe them. That tells me that the British feel they can't trust our guys, and have just decided to make a little money off of them. Is this just another relationship that Obozo has screwed up?

Quote from: mdgiles on August 03, 2013, 05:27:23 AM
Uh this isn't about Health Care, it's about a deal our spy agency made with their spy agency. What bother's me is the US subsidizing the other spy agency. That Britain would spy on everyone not British is understood, that's what countries do. But they should be more than willing to pass on information to an ally. We shouldn't have to bribe them. That tells me that the British feel they can't trust our guys, and have just decided to make a little money off of them. Is this just another relationship that Obozo has screwed up?

Do you really imagine that the government's declaration that it has de facto ownership of each and every American (via health care) is unrelated to them granting themselves immunity from the law, and creating a police state?

They're not subsidizing another spy agency; they're paying them to do what no American intelligence agency can do within the law... and providing the same service for the Brits.

Again, they're not passing on "information" to we allies. That information would be based on a 'need to know' and involve specificity of information relative to real national security interests. .  They're sharing all general data, to create a data base. 

If you want to lay low, and hide from the government, having published a scorching documentation of the government's wrongdoing, then the government can do a simple database query, enter in a number of  relevant terms, and find out that your Aunt Matilda owns a rustic cabin in the Ozarks, your cell has tracks you to a cell tower not far from there, you paid for gas with a credit card on the way there, and you thanked your Uncle Ben for giving you the shotgun and pistol he no longer has the eyesight to use a year ago in a phone conversation.   They can also find out that you had a conversation with a friend two years ago about having smoked pot together when you were in your teens, and can later use that to corroborate the marijuana baggie they planted in your Aunt's rustic cabin to cool your ass in jail.

Quote from: mdgiles on August 03, 2013, 05:27:23 AM
Uh this isn't about Health Care, it's about a deal our spy agency made with their spy agency. What bother's me is the US subsidizing the other spy agency. That Britain would spy on everyone not British is understood, that's what countries do. But they should be more than willing to pass on information to an ally. We shouldn't have to bribe them. That tells me that the British feel they can't trust our guys, and have just decided to make a little money off of them. Is this just another relationship that Obozo has screwed up?

We have the same agreement with Germany. The fact that we are paying them money is simple numbers...our population is huge, so tracking our every communication takes more resources. They ain't gonna do it for free.

This is an operation of massive proportions.

http://rt.com/news/france-spying-nsa-citizens-672/

Quote from: kramarat on August 03, 2013, 05:46:01 AM
We have the same agreement with Germany. The fact that we are paying them money is simple numbers...our population is huge, so tracking our every communication takes more resources. They ain't gonna do it for free.

I think the British should be spying on us in every shape , manner and form they can. That's what sovereign nations do. And many countries in the world are effected by everything the US does. I would bet that every other foreign embassy official in Washington is a spy. My beef is why do we have to bribe our erstwhile allies to share? Did we do this before, or is it something that only became necessary under the current administration?

Quote from: mdgiles on August 03, 2013, 05:55:06 AM
I think the British should be spying on us in every shape , manner and form they can. That's what sovereign nations do. And many countries in the world are effected by everything the US does. I would bet that every other foreign embassy official in Washington is a spy. My beef is why do we have to bribe our erstwhile allies to share? Did we do this before, or is it something that only became necessary under the current administration?

I think this is a fairly new twist.

This isn't about sharing, it's about circumventing US law. Our European counterparts do not have the resources to collect every single communication that goes on in the US, nor would they be interested...hence the bribery and coercion.

The NSA has to get warrants to dig into our private communications...not so, if they are receiving this information from another country.

The sheer magnitude and audacity of this, is stunning. White House tours will be closed until further notice.

Quote from: mdgiles on August 03, 2013, 05:55:06 AM
I think the British should be spying on us in every shape , manner and form they can. That's what sovereign nations do. And many countries in the world are effected by everything the US does. I would bet that every other foreign embassy official in Washington is a spy. My beef is why do we have to bribe our erstwhile allies to share? Did we do this before, or is it something that only became necessary under the current administration?

Lets say that the NSA wants to listen to a conversation between you and your nephew, but lacks probable cause to get a warrant. This fixes it...they simply tap the French, Germans, Brits, or whoever's servers that that conversation resides on, and badda bing-badda boom, they get to listen to your conversation, even though they are not the ones that did the spying on you. You're not gonna sue the French government for recording your conversation.
It's like they got themselves an easy button, like in the TV commercials; everything can be done with a few mouse clicks, and they've got plausible deniability.

Quote from: kramarat on August 03, 2013, 06:26:11 AM
Lets say that the NSA wants to listen to a conversation between you and your nephew, but lacks probable cause to get a warrant. This fixes it...they simply tap the French, Germans, Brits, or whoever's servers that that conversation resides on, and badda bing-badda boom, they get to listen to your conversation, even though they are not the ones that did the spying on you. You're not gonna sue the French government for recording your conversation.
It's like they got themselves an easy button, like in the TV commercials; everything can be done with a few mouse clicks, and they've got plausible deniability.

Except of course that all those Europeans already spy on every server that's on their territory. The Europeans don't have anything that even vaguely resembles our Bill of Rights. What I'm saying is, if they're doing it anyway - which they are - why do we have to pay them for the juicy stuff. Shouldn't the chief German spy be calling up the chief American spy going "Have I got news for you"? Doesn't the NSA call up the Germans and tell them that the Turkish immigrant they been keeping an eye on is even crazier than they thought?

Quote from: mdgiles on August 03, 2013, 06:40:12 AM
Except of course that all those Europeans already spy on every server that's on their territory. The Europeans don't have anything that even vaguely resembles our Bill of Rights. What I'm saying is, if they're doing it anyway - which they are - why do we have to pay them for the juicy stuff. Shouldn't the chief German spy be calling up the chief American spy going "Have I got news for you"? Doesn't the NSA call up the Germans and tell them that the Turkish immigrant they been keeping an eye on is even crazier than they thought?

Correct. The Europeans are already spying on their own citizens.
The US government wants to do the same, but is prevented by law from doing so.

The only way to circumvent our laws, is to give the Europeans the ability to track every US, (civilian), communication. There are a lot more of us to track, and somebody has to pay for the infrastructure to make it possible. That's where the money comes in.

So...suppose your nephew is getting into radical Islam, or even drug dealing. The US government would be able to listen to his calls and go after him; no warrant required. They would be acting on a "tip" from one of our European allies. The "tip" from the foreign government would include the contents of your nephew's calls. They would be able to do the same for each and every one of us, at any time they pleased.

Kramarat, your last paragraph nails it.

Quote from: Trip on August 03, 2013, 07:18:41 AM
Kramarat, your last paragraph nails it.

It certainly explains why Snowden had very few options for asylum. It damned sure wouldn't have happened in Europe. I don't see him as a traitor.

This goes beyond anything I could have imagined.