The usual Establishment farce is being played out once again. Faced with Edward Snowden’s evidence that the UK government’s spy centre GCHQ used the US National Security Agency’s Prism programme to gain illicit access on an industrial scale to the content of private communications of millions of people across the world, the Commons’ Intelligence Services Committee (ISC) have reassured us that “from the evidence we have seen, we have concluded that this is unfounded”.

Really? It turns out that, in an extremely short investigation, they had only looked at intelligence information that GCHQ had specifically requested from the US on on particular warranted suspects. But that of course is not the point. What really is at issue is whether GCHQ obtained access to personal data on British citizens or individuals in Britain that had been offered by the NSA to the UK security services, and whether that is legal. It clearly isn’t without a dubious interpretation of the law stretching it far beyond what Parliament clearly intended. Continue reading →