“British spies may have put lives at risk because their surveillance systems were sweeping up more data than could be analyzed, leading them to miss clues to possible security threats” according to documents in the Snowden files, now published by The Intercept.
A common analogy when it comes to mass surveillance is “trying to find a needle in a haystack”. Thus, having a bigger haystack might make it harder to find the needle.
Sure enough. The Intercept writes…
Silkie Carlo, a policy officer at the London-based human rights group Liberty, told The Intercept that the details contained in the secret report highlighted the need for a comprehensive independent review of the proposed new surveillance powers.
“Intelligence whistleblowers have warned that the agencies are drowning in data — and now we have it confirmed from the heart of the U.K. government,” Carlo said. “If our agencies have risked missing ‘life-saving intelligence’ by collecting ‘significantly’ more data than they can analyze, how can they justify casting the net yet wider in the toxic Investigatory Powers Bill?”
The British government’s Home Office, which handles media requests related to MI5, declined to comment for this story.
And this is not just a general opinion. There are figures.
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.
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.
“Only a small proportion of the Preston Traffic is viewed,” they noted. “This is of concern as the collection is all warranted.”
Then, there is mission creep…
Carlo, the policy analyst with Liberty, said the revelations about MILKWHITE suggested members of Parliament had been misled about how so-called bulk data is handled. “While MPs have been told that bulk powers have been used only by the intelligence community, it now appears it has been ‘business as usual’ for the tax man to access mass internet data for years,” she said.
We told you this would happen.
/ HAX
Links:
• The Intercept: Facing data deluge, secret U.K. spying report warned of intelligence failure »
• Supporting document: Digint Narrative »
• Supporting document: Digint Imbalance »
• BoingBoing: MI5 warning: we’re gathering more than we can analyse, and will miss terrorist attacks »
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