LONDON: Britain said eavesdropping by its Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) security agency was legal and no threat to privacy but would not confirm or deny reports it received data from a secret US intelligence programme.
British and US newspapers have suggested that the US National Security Agency handed over information on Britons gathered under the PRISM programme.
In his first remarks on the subject, Foreign Secretary William Hague said the two countries did share intelligence but that GCHQ’s work was governed by a very strong legal framework.
“The idea that in GCHQ people are sitting around working out how to circumvent a UK law with another agency in another country is fanciful,” Hague told BBC TV yesterday. “It is nonsense”.
Promising he would give a statement on the subject to the lower house of Britain’s parliament today, Hague said there was no threat to privacy or people’s civil liberties. He said was limited in what he could disclose.
“Of course we share a lot of information with the United States,” he said, adding that the two countries enjoyed “an exceptional intelligence sharing relationship”. “But if information arrives in the UK from the US it’s governed by our laws.”
Britain’s two-party coalition government is under pressure to reveal more details of how Britain and the United States share intelligence after the reports, based on a leak, suggested such cooperation ran much deeper than was previously known.
Critics said the collaboration amounted to a “snoopers’ charter by the back door”, accusing the security services of having much greater access to Britons’ phone and electronic communications than allowed under British law thanks to the clandestine US programme.
But Hague said such fears were misplaced. “Intelligence gathering in this country, by the UK, is governed by a very strong legal framework so that we get the balance right between the liberties and privacy of people and the security of the country.”
Any intelligence gathering was “authorised, necessary, proportionate and targeted,” he added, saying he personally authorised GCHQ intercepts “most days of the week”. There is public debate in Britain about giving the security services more powers to eavesdrop after a British soldier was brutally killed in London last month in an incident the government described as a “terrorist” attack.
Britain’s parliamentary intelligence and security committee has demanded a report from GCHQ on the subject. By coincidence, its members are due in Washington today to conduct talks with lawmakers and officials in the US intelligence community.
Hague said most Britons had nothing to fear. “If you are a law-abiding citizen of this country ... you’ll never be aware of all the things those (intelligence) agencies are doing to stop your identity being stolen or to stop a terrorist blowing you up tomorrow,” he said.
“But if you are a would-be terrorist or the centre of a criminal network or a foreign intelligence agency trying to spy on Britain you should be worried because that is what we work on and we are on the whole quite good at it.”
Reuters
