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Facing Data Deluge, Secret U.K. Spying Report Warned of Intelligence
Failure<br>
<br>
<blockquote>97 percent of the calls, messages, and data the program
had collected were found to have been “not viewed” by the
authorities.<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
"The amount of data being collected, however, proved difficult for
MI5 to handle. In March 2010, in another secret report, concerns
were reiterated about the agency’s difficulties processing the
material it was harvesting. “There is an imbalance between
collection and exploitation capabilities, resulting in a failure to
make effective use of some of the intelligence collected today,” the
report noted. “With the exception of the highest priority
investigations, a lack of staff and tools means that investigators
are presented with raw and unfiltered DIGINT data. Frequently, this
material is not fully assessed because of the significant time
required to review it.”<br>
<br>
The problem was not unique to MI5.<br>
<br>
Many of the agency’s larger-scale surveillance operations were being
conducted in coordination with the National Technical Assistance
Centre, a unit of the electronic eavesdropping agency Government
Communications Headquarters, better known as GCHQ.<br>
<br>
The Centre plays a vital but little-known role. One of its main
functions is to act as a kind of intermediary, managing the highly
sensitive data-sharing relationships that exist among British
telecommunications companies and law enforcement and spy agencies.<br>
<br>
Perhaps the most important program the Centre helps deliver is
code-named PRESTON, which covertly intercepts phone calls, text
messages, and internet data sent or received by people or
organizations in the U.K. who have been named as surveillance
targets on warrants signed off by a government minister.<br>
<br>
A top-secret 2009 study found that, in one six-month period, the
PRESTON program had intercepted more than 5 million communications.
Remarkably, 97 percent of the calls, messages, and data it had
collected were found to have been “not viewed” by the authorities.<br>
<br>
The authors of the study were alarmed because PRESTON was supposedly
focused on known suspects, and yet most of the communications it was
monitoring appeared to be getting ignored — meaning crucial
intelligence could have been missed.<br>
<br>
“Only a small proportion of the Preston Traffic is viewed,” they
noted. “This is of concern as the collection is all warranted.”<br>
<br>
In full:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://theintercept.com/2016/06/07/mi5-gchq-digint-surveillance-data-deluge/">https://theintercept.com/2016/06/07/mi5-gchq-digint-surveillance-data-deluge/</a><br>
<br>
Again. IF EVERYONE was using Tor, PGP, etc, NO MATTER HOW FLAWED OR
COMPROMISED, it WOULD break them, and their respective country's
treasury.<br>
<br>
Promoting the idea we SHOULDN'T use it and 'spread the risk' is a
useful idiot's cowardly POV.<br>
<br>
Rr<br>
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