GCHQ: EU surveillance hearing is told of huge cyber-attack on Belgian firm (Guardian)

[BelgianMadCow]

A cyber-attack on the internet systems of the main Belgian telecommunications company, Belgacom, was so massive and so sophisticated that no company or country would have been able to withstand it, a European parliament committee looking into the mass surveillance operations of the US National Security Agency (NSA) and Britain's GCHQ has been told.

The hearing of the parliament's civil liberties committee was told by Belgacom executives that it did not know the source nor the purpose of the complex hacking operation detected in June. Sophia In't Veld, the Dutch Liberal chairing the session, said it was clear from the evidence that the scale of the attack meant it could only have been performed by a "state actor".

Last month, quoting leaked documents from the NSA whistleblower, Edward Snowden, the German magazine Der Spiegel reported that the Belgacom systems had been infiltrated by GCHQ in what was codenamed Operation Socialist.

Guardian

At least there are some serious hearings in the EU parliament, it seems. Note that Belgacom is being all but forthcoming. No client data compromised, they are saying. In a three year massive spy operation by the UK. Right.

[dipsydoodle]

1. GCHQ facing privacy challenge in European courts.

Papers lodged at the European Court of Human Rights allege that British intelligence agencies were acting illegally when they collected vast amounts of data entering or leaving the UK, including the content of emails and social media.

The action has been launched by Big Brother Watch, the Open Rights Group and English PEN following revelations by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden that GCHQ had the capacity to collect more than 21 petabytes of data a day - the equivalent to sending all the information in all the books in the British Library 192 times every 24 hours.

Daniel Carey, solicitor at Deighton Pierce Glynn, who is representing the applicants, said: "We are asking the court to declare that unrestrained surveillance of much of Europe's internet communications by the UK government, and the outdated regulatory system that has permitted this, breach our rights to privacy."

The revelations about the Prism and Tempora programmes, codenames for previously secret online surveillance operations, have raised concerns at government level both in the UK and abroad.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/10354472/GCHQ-facing-privacy-challenge-in-European-courts.html#

Just a convenient link. Doubtless there will be others by Friday morning in the UK.