NSA pays £100m in secret funding for GCHQ. "It's not just a US problem. They are worse than the US."

[Catherina]

Exclusive: NSA pays £100m in secret funding for GCHQ

• 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

Nick Hopkins and Julian Borger
The Guardian, Thursday 1 August 2013 11.04 EDT


The NSA paid £15.5m towards redevelopments at GCHQ’s site in Bude, north Cornwall, which intercepts communications from the transatlantic cables that carry internet traffic. Photograph: Kieran Doherty/Reuters

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 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".

...

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.

...

No other detail is provided – but it raises the possibility that GCHQ might have been spying on an American living in the US. The NSA is prohibited from doing this by US law.

...

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/01/nsa-paid-gchq-spying-edward-snowden

"It's not just a US problem. They are worse than the US." - Edward Snowden

[xchrom]

1. we have real fucking problems: infrastructure, education, the poor, etc -- and the government makes

stupid expenditures like this.

it's EXPENSIVE to track my uninteresting data.

[Jesus Malverde]

2. The brits would need content to do this.

Are they getting our content?

Is the mission of GCHQ to support democracy or the royal family?

Their logo looks like the crown giving you a big hug.

[L0oniX]

3. "spying on an American living in the US. The NSA is prohibited from doing this by US law"

I have a bridge for sale ...cheap. Laws are so last century. BTW ...when are they going to get around to prosecuting Iraq war criminals, it's liars and banksters? Law is clearly only for little people ...and even then you can be shot by the police for going out to your car to get a cigarette ...especially if you are black. The law is a bad and deadly joke.

[cantbeserious]

4. Americans Paying The British To Spy On Americans

eom

[dgibby]

5. Plausible Deniability.

WE don't spy on American citizens in the US, but we do pay the Brits to do it for us.

[Catherina]

8. And for such a cheap price too. Hopefully Cameron will be answering some tough questions soon

but their Parliament, while more colorful during debates, seems even more worthless than our Congress judging by their accelerated pace of ramming *asuterity* through. New Zealand is dealing with similar revelations, or rather *confirmations*.

Another pitch to keep the US happy involves reminding Washington that the UK is less regulated than the US. The British agency described this as one of its key "selling points".

I smell a house of cards falling down.

"We both accept and accommodate NSA's different way of working," the document said. "We are less constrained by NSA's concerns about compliance."

...

However, there are indications from within GCHQ that senior staff are not at ease with the rate and pace of change. The head of one of its programmes warned the agency was now receiving so much new intelligence that its "mission management … is no longer fit for purpose".

[cali]

6. virtually nothing would surprise me about the U.S.

national security apparatus.

this is just the stuff we know about. I shudder to think about black ops. And I think one has to be terribly naive to believe that they don't exist. they always have.

[Catherina]

7. The only thing that surprises me is the cynicism in the word parsing lol

I totally agree with you, down to the shudder. Good morning dear Cali

[cantbeserious]

10. The Mind Reels Contemplating The Possibilities

eom

[cali]

11. and the stomach flips over and the heart has palpitations

I'm not sure I could bear knowing.

[Segami]

9. K&R!