UK parl. demands report on US spying

On Thursday, Malcolm Rifkind, Chairman of the ISC that oversees Britain’s intelligence agencies including MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, said he would demand GCHQ to provide an explanation about revelations that the US National Security Agency (NSA) analyzed and stored the phone, internet and email communications of British citizens.

“As with any significant stories concerning any of the intelligence agencies, we will require and receive a full report from them on this,” Rifkind said.

The GCHQ should give the committee the details of a secret deal with the US that allows the NSA to “unmask” ordinary Britons’ personal data, he added.

The worst part about the surveillance disclosure is that the vast majority of those spied on were innocents not suspected of any crime and the data was incidentally collected.

The US and the UK are the two main intelligence partners and the governments had agreed not to spy on each other’s citizens.

However, according to documents leaked by the former US surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden in October, the code of conduct changed primarily in 2007 with the approval of British intelligence officials.

Snowden’s leaks reveal that German, French, Spanish, and Swedish intelligence agencies are working in close partnership with the GCHQ.

The documents show that these agencies have all developed methods of mass surveillance of internet and phone traffic over the past five years.

The mass monitoring is conducted through direct taps into fiber optic cables and the development of covert relationships with telecommunications companies.

Snowden leaked two top secret US government spying programs under which the NSA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are eavesdropping on millions of American and European phone records and the Internet data from major Internet companies such as Facebook, Yahoo, Google, Apple, and Microsoft.

The NSA scandal took even broader dimensions when Snowden revealed information about its espionage activities targeting friendly countries.

MSM/MAM

Source Article from http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/11/23/336129/uk-parl-demands-report-on-us-spying/

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