British intelligence tapping fiber-optic cables for massive amounts of data

June 22, 2013

More secret National Security Agency documents leaked by Edward Snowden to The Guardian suggest that the U.S. agency’s British counterpart intercepts petabytes worth of communication data daily from fiber-optic cables. The operation codenamed “Tempora” by Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has been going on for at least 18 months and involves the use of “intercept probes” attached directly to transatlantic fiber-optic cables landing on British shores from telephone exchanges and Internet servers in North America. Commercial companies, described in the documents only as “intercept partners,” were secretly used to attach the intercepts on behalf of the GCHQ. The companies, whose identities have been concealed in the documents, were apparently obliged by law to cooperate with the GCHQ and in some cases paid for their effort. The intercepts have allowed GCHQ to scoop up and filter huge volumes of data, including email content, records of phone calls, Facebook entries and Internet browsing histories. “For the 2 billion users of the world wide web, Tempora represents a window on to their everyday lives, sucking up every form of communication from the fiber-optic cables that ring the world,” the Guardian noted. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2042720/british-intelligence-tapping-fiberoptic-cables-for-massive-amounts-of-data.html#tk.rss_all