American eavesdropping

‘UK secretly agreed to US surveillance of British citizens’

Published on 21 November 2013 at 09:54

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British intelligence officials approved a US request to analyse and store the telephone, internet and email records of UK nationals, including those not suspected of any criminal activity, according to new documents released by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden.

The NSA memo reveals that in 2007 a deal was agreed between the US and UK to allow the storage of Britons’ telecoms data and for it to be made accessible to a host of US intelligence agencies and military departments, writes The Guardian. This is the first such explicit proof that the UK was included in the US data trawl. The daily continues –

The NSA has been using the UK data to conduct so-called ‘pattern of life’ or ‘contact-chaining’ analyses, under which the agency can look up to three ‘hops’ away from a target of interest – examining the communications of a friend of a friend of a friend.

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