British Intelligence watchdog flies to Washington to demand answers on snooping scandal

[FarCenter]

The Government's Intelligence and Security Committee is going on a week-long tour, when it will meet senior figures from the America’s intelligence agencies.

The news came after leaked US documents appeared to show that Britain’s listening post GCHQ has been secretly gathering intelligence from some of the world’s biggest internet firms through America’s National Security Agency.

The Guardian newspaper claimed that it had obtained documents that show that GCHQ, based in Cheltenham, has had access to the system since at least June 2010, and generated 197 intelligence reports from it last year.

It raises the prospect that the intelligence agency is able to circumvent UK restrictions on accessing people’s communications by obtaining the same information via the US authorities.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet-security/10107059/British-Intelligence-watchdog-flies-to-Washington-to-demand-answers-on-snooping-scandal.html

Isn't that the whole point of Echelon? We spy on British citizens and they spy on our citizens, so no one is spying on their own citizens? That way, no one is breaking the law and it is all good.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON

[JimDandy]

1. Cause no way in hell he was going to use the phone.

[FarCenter]

2. I'm fairly certain that GCHQ and NSA can set up a secure phone call

Their predecessors could for Roosevelt and Churchill during WW II.

[1-Old-Man]

3. It is almost laughable to compare communications in the 1940s to the NSA activities today

And even more laughable to imply that the NSA doesn't monitor its own.

[FarCenter]

4. The system between Roosevelt and Churchill used one-time pads on phongraph records.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?