International Law

Tony Blair and phone security

ABC News in the USA has a whistleblower story: Whistleblower: U.S. Snooped on Tony Blair, Iraqi President

Initially this whistleblower David Murfee Faulk alleged illegal snooping on the phone calls of innocent US citizens, including journalists and the families of US soldiers serving in Iraq. He has worked as a US Army Arabic language translator at the National Security Agency "Black Hall" listening post at Fort Gordon, Georgia, before becoming a local news reporter. These allegations have been taken seriously enough for a US Congressional investigation into them to have been started.

He claims that he had access to a secret database called Anchory, formerly known as the SIGINT Online Intelligence System i.e. a signald intelligence database run by the National Security Agency.

Given that the British press are following the ABC News scoop, it is sad to see them getting simple details from the original wrong:

The Daily Mail has spoiled its report of the story with the following inaccuracy and misspelling:

Mr Blair was given the code named "Anchory" as his private telephone calls were routinely listened into and recorded.

The Daily Telegraph and the Press Association reports do not make that mistake, although somehow The Guardian's headline to the syndicated PA story more accurately describes him as an "ex-Navy Operator", (see the previous ABC News report which describes him as a "former Navy Arab linguist") even though the PA story text says "US Army Arabic linguist"

Such simple errors call into question the accuracy of the rest of these stories, and of these mainstream media organisations as a whole.

These UK media reports , whilst bemoaning some alleged "unwritten rule" about not spying on allies, miss the obvious question of how it was technically possible for anyone to intercept the phone communications of a British Prime Minister, no matter who they are.

• Is Gordon Brown's mobile phone or voicemail also being intercepted by the US National Security Agency ?

• How much UK mobile phone and landline and internet traffic is currently being handed over in bulk to the US National Security Agency by UK Government agencies like GCHQ ?

• Is the United Kingdom's GCHQ intercepting President Bush or President-Elect Barack Obama's mobile phones ?

• If GCHQ and the Whitehall securocats cannot even keep information of a "personal nature" about a British Prime Minister's "private life" out of the clutches of foreign intelligence agency phone interception system, then why should they be trusted with the massive Communications Traffic Data centralised database, which Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is planning to inflict on tens of millions of innocent British people ?
  

Full post as published by Spy Blog on November 25, 2008 (boomark / email).