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They flow deep underneath the Atlantic Ocean and into the United Kingdom below the golden sands of idyllic beaches. But the internet cables that come ashore at the coast of Cornwall, England, are not just used to connect the country with the rest of the world. According to new reports based on documents from National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, the cables have become an integral part of the global mass surveillance system operated by the British spy agency Government Communications Headquarters, intimately assisted by a company now owned by Vodafone, the world’s third largest cellphone network provider.

The latest details about the extent of the spying were revealed on Thursday by the British Channel 4 News, the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, and the German broadcaster WDR, who worked in partnership with Intercept founding editor Laura Poitras. The Intercept obtained a preview of the revelations in advance of their publication. According to the reports, British telecommunications firms have helped GCHQ dramatically scale-up the volume of internet data it collects from undersea cables. In the five years leading up to 2012, there was a 7,000-fold increase in the amount of data the agency was sweeping up, with its computers monitoring some 46 billion private communications “events” every day, according to documents cited in the reports. The data swept up from the cables would include content from emails, online messages, browsing sessions, and calls made using internet chat tools.

British telecommunications company Cable & Wireless played a leading role in the secret cable tapping operation, according to the reports, and the collaboration appears to have gone further than simply complying with the law in helping implement the surveillance. The company provided GCHQ with updates on opportunities it could give the agency to tap into internet traffic, and in February 2009 a GCHQ employee was assigned to work within Cable & Wireless in a “full-time project management” role. The British government paid Cable & Wireless more than £5 million ($9 million) of taxpayers’ money as part of an annual lease for GCHQ to access the cables. The agency described the company a “partner” and designated it the codename Gerontic.

Thousands of people are signing up to join an unprecedented legal campaign against the United Kingdom’s leading electronic surveillance agency. On Monday, London-based human rights group Privacy International launched an initiative enabling anyone across the world to challenge covert spying operations involving Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, the National Security Agency’s British counterpart. The campaign was made possible following a historic court ruling earlier this month that deemed intelligence sharing between GCHQ and the NSA to have been unlawful because of the extreme secrecy shrouding it.

Consequently, members of the public now have a rare opportunity to take part in a lawsuit against the spying in the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, a special British court that handles complaints about surveillance operations conducted by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Privacy International is allowing anyone who wants to participate to submit their name, email address and phone number through a page on its website. The group plans to use the details to lodge a case with GCHQ and the court that will seek to discover whether each participant’s emails or phone calls have been covertly obtained by the agency in violation of the privacy and freedom of expression provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights. If it is established that any of the communications have been unlawfully collected, the court could force GCHQ to delete them from its vast repositories of intercepted data.

By Tuesday evening, more than 10,000 people had already signed up to the campaign, a spokesman for Privacy International told The Intercept. In a statement announcing the campaign on Monday, Eric King, deputy director of Privacy International, said: “The public have a right to know if they were illegally spied on, and GCHQ must come clean on whose records they hold that they should never have had in the first place. “We have known for some time that the NSA and GCHQ have been engaged in mass surveillance, but never before could anyone explicitly find out if their phone calls, emails, or location histories were unlawfully shared between the U.S. and U.K. “There are few chances that people have to directly challenge the seemingly unrestrained surveillance state, but individuals now have a historic opportunity finally hold GCHQ accountable for their unlawful actions.”

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism is asking a European court to rule on whether UK legislation properly protects journalists’ sources and communications from government scrutiny and mass surveillance. The Bureau’s application was filed with the European Court of Human Rights on Friday. If the court rules in favour of the application it will force the UK government to review regulation around the mass collection of communications data. The action follows concerns about the implications to journalists of some of the revelations that have come out of material leaked by Edward Snowden. These have made it clear that by using mass surveillance techniques and programs such as Tempora government agencies can not only collect, store and scrutinise the content of electronic communications but also analyse masses of metadata – the details about where digital communications such as emails originate and the subject area of those communications. Gavin Millar QC, who is working on the case with the Bureau, believes UK authorities are routinely carrying out such data collection and analysis and says this enables a sophisticated picture to be developed of a journalist’s or organisation’s network of contacts, sources and lines of enquiry as well as materials, subjects and persons of interest to them.

The Bureau’s Christopher Hird says: “We understand why the government feels the need to have the power of interception. “But our concern is that the existing regulatory regime to control the interception of communications data – such as phone calls and emails – by organisations such as GCHQ does not provide sufficient safeguards to ensure the protection of journalists’ sources, and as a result is a restriction on the operation of a free press.” The collection of data by authorities is governed in the UK by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, known as RIPA. This is primarily focused on internal communications. Many of the investigations undertaken by Bureau journalists involve foreign sources and stories, which are more vulnerable to interception as RIPA does not provide the same safeguards as it does for internal communications. The Bureau is working with lawyers from Doughty Street chambers and law firm Leigh Day, who have advised that there is little protection or rigorous scrutiny provided by current UK legislation for these “external” communications.

Friendly relations between US and Israel could turn sour over revelations that the NSA tapped Netanyahu, revealing efforts to block the Iran nuclear deal. The U.S. National Security Agency spied on close ally Israel, exposing how Israelis lobbied U.S. authorities to undermine the Iranian nuclear deal, RT reports.   The monitoring came in spite of a U.S. pledge to tone down surveillance of friendly states, while the latest snooping even included some Congress members private conversations. Former Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Pete Hoekstra called the interceptions an “abuse of power” and called for an investigation into the allegations. “WSJ (Wall Street Journal) report that NSA spied on Congress and Israel communications very disturbing. Actually outrageous. Maybe unprecedented abuse of power,” Hoekstra wrote on his official Twitter account. “NSA and Obama officials need to be investigated and prosecuted if any truth to WSJ reports. NSA loses all credibility. Scary,” he added.

Friendly relations between US and Israel could turn sour over revelations that the NSA tapped Netanyahu, revealing efforts to block the Iran nuclear deal. The U.S. National Security Agency spied on close ally Israel, exposing how Israelis lobbied U.S. authorities to undermine the Iranian nuclear deal, RT reports.   The monitoring came in spite of a U.S. pledge to tone down surveillance of friendly states, while the latest snooping even included some Congress members private conversations. Former Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Pete Hoekstra called the interceptions an “abuse of power” and called for an investigation into the allegations. “WSJ (Wall Street Journal) report that NSA spied on Congress and Israel communications very disturbing. Actually outrageous. Maybe unprecedented abuse of power,” Hoekstra wrote on his official Twitter account. “NSA and Obama officials need to be investigated and prosecuted if any truth to WSJ reports. NSA loses all credibility. Scary,” he added.

Massive surveillance has continued under President Barack Obama’s two terms, and the revelations of Edward Snowden in 2013 over the extent of the data harvested from civilians did little to dent the spy agency’s activities, according to the Wall Street Journal. A “protected list” rapidly pulled together by the Obama administration in the wake of the scandal to safeguard its closest allies from monitoring included countries including Germany and France. Israel, however, was not on this list, and was instead placed as NSA’s top monitoring priority, as was Turkey. A senior US official said told the Wall Street Journal, “Going dark on Bibi? Of course we wouldn’t do that,” using Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s nickname.

NSA has collected cell records from all major mobile networks.

On Sept. 11, 2007, the National Security Agency signed up Microsoft as its first partner for PRISM, a massive domestic surveillance program whose existence was reported by the Washington Post today. That’s barely a month after Congress passed, and President George W. Bush signed, the Protect America Act.

The Bush Administration portrayed the PAA as a technical fix designed to close a gap in America’s surveillance capabilities that had been opened by a then-recent ruling of the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). It proved to be much more than that. While the details are still classified, reports suggested that the FISC had ruled that it was illegal for the government to intercept communications between two foreign endpoints if the communications happened to pass through the United States. Warning that the U.S. would suddenly lose the ability to continue its surveillance of terrorists, the administration pushed the PAA through Congress in a matter of days.

In reality, the PAA represented a sweeping change to American surveillance law. Before conducting surveillance, the PAA only required executive branch officials to “certify” that there were “reasonable procedures” in place for ensuring that surveillance “concerns” persons located outside the United States and that the foreign intelligence is a “significant purpose” of the program. A single certification could cover a broad program intercepting the communications of numerous individuals. And there was no requirement for judicial review of individual surveillance targets within a “certified” program.

A House Democrat said information revealed about the National Security Agency's secret surveillance programs are "the tip of the iceberg," Daniel Strauss of The Hill reports. "I think it's just broader than most people even realize, and I think that's, in one way, what astounded most of us, too," Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) told C-SPAN's "Washington Journal" after a classified briefing with national security officials. Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), who also attended the meeting, said that the NSA "violated the spirit of the law when it started collecting data from everyone in the country just because technology now makes that possible.” Barton added that "in America ... You don’t target everyone and violate their 4th Amendment rights just because of a handful of threats. But that is exactly what is happening at the NSA ... it is wrong and it needs to stop now.” More from Sanchez: "I don't know if there are other leaks, if there's more information somewhere, if somebody else is going to step up, but I will tell you that I believe it's the tip of the iceberg."

A House Democrat said information revealed about the National Security Agency's secret surveillance programs are "the tip of the iceberg," Daniel Strauss of The Hill reports. "I think it's just broader than most people even realize, and I think that's, in one way, what astounded most of us, too," Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) told C-SPAN's "Washington Journal" after a classified briefing with national security officials. Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), who also attended the meeting, said that the NSA "violated the spirit of the law when it started collecting data from everyone in the country just because technology now makes that possible.” Barton added that "in America ... You don’t target everyone and violate their 4th Amendment rights just because of a handful of threats. But that is exactly what is happening at the NSA ... it is wrong and it needs to stop now.”

Glenn Greenwald of the Guardian, who has served as a conduit for Snowden's leaks, recently said that there will me many more "significant revelations that have not yet been heard." Greenwald told The New York Times that he received “thousands” of classified documents — “dozens” of which are newsworthy — from the the 29-year-old ex-Booz Allen employee who was contracted by the NSA. Sanchez said that what lawmakers learned "is significantly more than what is out in the media today," which is interesting when considering previous reports by journalists and whistleblowers.

Yesterday, the Guardian released two previously-classified documents describing the internal "minimization" and "targeting" procedures used by the NSA to conduct surveillance under Section 702. These procedures are approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) on an annual basis and are supposed to serve as the bulwark between the NSA's vast surveillance capabilities and the private communications of Americans. As we noted earlier today, the procedures, themselves, aren't reassuring: far too much discretion is retained by NSA analysts, the procedures frequently resolve doubt in favor of collection, and information is obtained that could otherwise never be obtained without a warrant. Which would be bad enough, if it were the end of the story. But it's not.

Unless the government substantially changed the procedures between August 2010 and October 2011, these are the very procedures that the FISC eventually found resulted in illegal and unconstitutional surveillance. In October 2011, the FISC issued an 86-page opinion finding that collection carried out under the NSA's classified minimization procedures was unconstitutional. The opinion remains secret, but it is very likely that yesterday's leaked NSA documents show the very minimization procedures the Director of National Intelligence admitted the FISC had found resulted in surveillance that was “unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment" and "circumvented the spirit of the law." And for good reason: the procedures are unconstitutional. They allow for the government to obtain and keep huge amounts of information it could never Constitutionally get without a warrant based on probable cause. As we explained, the procedures are designed such that the NSA will routinely fail to exclude or remove United States persons' communications, and the removal of those communications are wholly entrusted to the "reasonable discretion" of an analyst.  

Yesterday, the Guardian released two previously-classified documents describing the internal "minimization" and "targeting" procedures used by the NSA to conduct surveillance under Section 702. These procedures are approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) on an annual basis and are supposed to serve as the bulwark between the NSA's vast surveillance capabilities and the private communications of Americans. As we noted earlier today, the procedures, themselves, aren't reassuring: far too much discretion is retained by NSA analysts, the procedures frequently resolve doubt in favor of collection, and information is obtained that could otherwise never be obtained without a warrant. Which would be bad enough, if it were the end of the story. But it's not. The targeting and minimization documents released yesterday are dated a few months after the first publicly known scandal over the new FAA procedures: In April 2009, the New York Times reported that Section 702 surveillance had “intercepted the private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans . . . on a scale that went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress." In June 2009, the Times reported that members of Congress were saying NSA's "recent intercepts of the private telephone calls and e-mail messages of Americans are broader than previously acknowledged." Rep. Rush Holt described the problems as "so flagrant that they can't be accidental."

Here’s a recap of Snowden’s leaked documents published so far, in my own highly subjective order of importance.

A leaked executive order from President Obama shows the administration asked intelligence agencies to draw up a list of potential offensive cyberattack targets around the world. The order, which suggests targeting “systems, processes and infrastructure” states that such offensive hacking operations “can offer unique and unconventional capabilities to advance U.S. national objectives around the world with little or no warning to the adversary or target and with potential effects ranging from subtle to severely damaging.” The order followed repeated accusations by the U.S. government that China has engaged in state-sponsored hacking operations, and was timed just a day before President Obama’s summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Four days before a sweeping government surveillance law was set to expire last year, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the chairman of the chamber’s Intelligence Committee, took to the Senate floor. She touted the law’s value by listing some of the terrorist attacks it had helped thwart, including “a plot to bomb a downtown Chicago bar” that fall. “So I believe the FISA Amendments Act is important,” the California Democrat said before a vote to extend the 2008 law, “and these cases show the program has worked.”Today, however, the government is refusing to say whether that law was used to develop evidence to charge Adel Daoud, a 19-year-old Chicago man accused of the bomb plot.And Daoud’s lawyers said in a motion filed Friday that the reason is simple. The government, they said, wants to avoid a constitutional challenge to the law, which governs a National Security Agency surveillance program that has once again become the focus of national debate over its reach into Americans’ private communications.“Whenever it is good for the government to brag about its success, it speaks loudly and publicly,” lawyers Thomas Durkin and Joshua Herman wrote in their motion. “When a criminal defendant’s constitutional rights are at stake, however, it quickly and unequivocally clams up under the guise of State Secrets.”

Four days before a sweeping government surveillance law was set to expire last year, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the chairman of the chamber’s Intelligence Committee, took to the Senate floor. She touted the law’s value by listing some of the terrorist attacks it had helped thwart, including “a plot to bomb a downtown Chicago bar” that fall. “So I believe the FISA Amendments Act is important,” the California Democrat said before a vote to extend the 2008 law, “and these cases show the program has worked.”Today, however, the government is refusing to say whether that law was used to develop evidence to charge Adel Daoud, a 19-year-old Chicago man accused of the bomb plot.And Daoud’s lawyers said in a motion filed Friday that the reason is simple. The government, they said, wants to avoid a constitutional challenge to the law, which governs a National Security Agency surveillance program that has once again become the focus of national debate over its reach into Americans’ private communications.“Whenever it is good for the government to brag about its success, it speaks loudly and publicly,” lawyers Thomas Durkin and Joshua Herman wrote in their motion. “When a criminal defendant’s constitutional rights are at stake, however, it quickly and unequivocally clams up under the guise of State Secrets.”

If the government acknowledged that it had used evidence derived from the FISA Amendments Act, Daoud would have standing to challenge the law’s constitutionality. Specifically, Daoud’s lawyers would be able to take on a provision known as Section 702. The law permits the interception of foreign targets’ ­e-mails and phone calls without an individual warrant, including when the foreigners are in communication with Americans or legal residents.The U.S. Supreme Court in February rejected a constitutional challenge to Section 702 by a group of journalists, lawyers and human rights advocates, saying they had no standing to sue because they had not proved that their communications had been intercepted.But the court also said that if the government intends to use information derived from the Section 702 surveillance in a prosecution “it must provide advance notice of its intent,” and a defendant may challenge the lawfulness of the surveillance. The government assured the court that it would give such notice to criminal defendants.In a filing this month in Chicago, U.S. Attorney Gary S. Shapiro refused to say whether the evidence was obtained under Section 702. Instead, he said, the government told Daoud the evidence was acquired pursuant to a traditional FISA court order, rather than under the expanded surveillance program authorized in 2008. A traditional order requires the government to go to a FISA judge and show probable cause that the target is an agent of a foreign power.Daoud’s attorneys say in their pleading that the government is being disingenuous. “We believe it is clear that the evidence . . . came from Section 702,” Durkin said in an interview. “Either Senator Feinstein’s information was correct in December 2012, or she was given wrong information. The government has never disputed what she said.”

AUSTIN, Texas — Amid a wave of widespread criticism and legal threats, the Washington Post has added a lengthy editor’s note to an article which alleged that a host of independent media websites were spreading Russian propaganda. Washington Post added editor's note to top of "Russian propaganda" story after being called out for shoddy reportinghttps://t.co/dWKbZJGS9a pic.twitter.com/skGiZUX2Ls — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) December 7, 2016 The article, written by Craig Timberg and published on Nov. 24, relied largely on information compiled by PropOrNot, an anonymous group that claims to be comprised of media analysts and researchers. At the time the Post story was published, the group’s homepage featured a list of 200 websites, including MintPress News and many other well-established independent media outlets, which the organization alleges are either deliberately or inadvertently spreading Russian propaganda. Among other criticisms levied against the group, PropOrNot’s research depends on overly broad criteria. According to its own stated methodology, criticism of the ”US, Obama, Hillary Clinton, the EU, Angela Merkel, NATO, Ukraine, Jewish people, US allies, the ‘mainstream media,’ and democrats, the center-right or center-left, and moderates of all stripes,” would be grounds for inclusion on “The List.” The Post added an editor’s note to the article on Wednesday in an apparent attempt to distance the newspaper from the controversy. “The Washington Post on Nov. 24 published a story on the work of four sets of researchers who have examined what they say are Russian propaganda efforts to undermine American democracy and interests,” the note begins.

While Timberg’s article does refer to the work of multiple researchers, the bulk of the report relied on allegations made by PropOrNot. The Washington Post continued: “One of them was PropOrNot, a group that insists on public anonymity, which issued a report identifying more than 200 websites that, in its view, wittingly or unwittingly published or echoed Russian propaganda. A number of those sites have objected to being included on PropOrNot’s list, and some of the sites, as well as others not on the list, have publicly challenged the group’s methodology and conclusions. The Post, which did not name any of the sites, does not itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot’s findings regarding any individual media outlet, nor did the article purport to do so.” Numerous websites, including MintPress, have objected to their inclusion on “The List.” On Tuesday, James Moody, the lawyer representing the publisher of the website Naked Capitalism, demanded a formal retraction and public apology on Tuesday. Moody wrote: “You did not provide even a single example of ‘fake news’ allegedly distributed or promoted by Naked Capitalism or indeed any of the 200 sites on the PropOrNot blacklist. You provided no discussion or assessment of the credentials or backgrounds of these so-called ‘researchers’ (Clint Watts, Andrew Weisburd, and J.M. Berger and the “team” at PropOrNot), and no discussion or analysis of the methodology, protocol or algorithms such ‘researchers’ may or may not have followed.” Backlash against both PropOrNot and the Post’s story hasn’t just come from media outlets included on “The List,” though.

“The group promoted by the Post … embodies the toxic essence of Joseph McCarthy, but without the courage to attach individual names to the blacklist,” wrote Ben Norton and Glenn Greenwald in The Intercept, which was not featured on the PropOrNot list, on Nov. 26. The Post’s editor’s note concludes: “Since publication of The Post’s story, PropOrNot has removed some sites from its list.” However, MintPress and Naked Capitalism remain on “The List,” as do respected alternative and independent media sites Antiwar.com, Black Agenda Report, Truthout, and Truthdig. Overall, the Post’s new position seemed poorly received by many of the media analysts who have criticized the story. On Wednesday evening, Adam Johnson, a reporter who writes for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, tweeted that the Post editors who refuse to retract the story are “a bunch of cowards.” what a bunch of cowards. "This blacklist that served as the entire news basis of our piece is bullshit but we wont retract the story" https://t.co/V5ZSwSMgTg — Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) December 7, 2016 Timberg’s article appeared amid widespread outcry over the apparent threat of “fake news” against American democracy. Kevin Gosztola, managing editor of Shadowproof, told MintPress editor-in-chief Mnar Muhawesh that the rush to create “blacklists” of media outlets undermines the freedom of the press.

Contrary to the general impression in Congress and the news media, the Syria chemical warfare intelligence summary released by the Barack Obama administration Aug. 30 did not represent an intelligence community assessment, an IPS analysis and interviews with former intelligence officials reveals. The evidence indicates that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper culled intelligence analyses from various agencies and by the White House itself, but that the White House itself had the final say in the contents of the document. Leading members of Congress to believe that the document was an intelligence community assessment and thus represents a credible picture of the intelligence on the alleged chemical attack of Aug. 21 has been a central element in the Obama administration’s case for war in Syria. That part of the strategy, at least, has been successful. Despite strong opposition in Congress to the proposed military strike in Syria, no one in either chamber has yet challenged the administration’s characterisation of the intelligence. But the administration is vulnerable to the charge that it has put out an intelligence document that does not fully and accurately reflect the views of intelligence analysts. Former intelligence officials told IPS that that the paper does not represent a genuine intelligence community assessment but rather one reflecting a predominantly Obama administration influence.

In essence, the White House selected those elements of the intelligence community assessments that supported the administration’s policy of planning a strike against the Syrian government force and omitted those that didn’t. In a radical departure from normal practice involving summaries or excerpts of intelligence documents that are made public, the Syria chemical weapons intelligence summary document was not released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence but by the White House Office of the Press Secretary. It was titled “Government Assessment of the Syrian Government’s Use of Chemical Weapons on August 21, 2013.” The first sentence begins, “The United States government assesses,” and the second sentence begins, “We assess”. The introductory paragraph refers to the main body of the text as a summary of “the intelligence community’s analysis” of the issue, rather than as an “intelligence community assessment”, which would have been used had the entire intelligence community endorsed the document.

A former senior intelligence official who asked not to be identified told IPS in an e-mail Friday that the language used by the White House “means that this is not an intelligence community document”. The former senior official, who held dozens of security classifications over a decades-long intelligence career, said he had “never seen a document about an international crisis at any classification described/slugged as a U.S. government assessment.” The document further indicates that the administration “decided on a position and cherry-picked the intelligence to fit it,” he said. “The result is not a balanced assessment of the intelligence.” Greg Thielmann, whose last position before retiring from the State Department was director of the Strategic, Proliferation and Military Affairs Office in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, told IPS he has never seen a government document labeled “Government Assessment” either. “If it’s an intelligence assessment,” Thielmann said, “why didn’t they label it as such?”

On Sunday, the German Bild am Sonntag newspaper reported that communications intercepted by German intelligence aboard a ship off the Syrian coast suggest al-Assad may not have approved chemical attacks. Citing unidentified high-level security sources, the newspaper said German intelligence had intercepted communications indicating Syrian military commanders had asked al-Assad for permission to use chemical weapons on nine separate occasions. He denied those requests, according to Bild am Sonntag. The German intelligence service, BND, declined to comment when contacted Monday by CNN regarding the account.

GCHQ's mass surveillance spying programmes are probably illegal and have been signed off by ministers in breach of human rights and surveillance laws, according to a hard-hitting legal opinion that has been provided to MPs.The advice warns that Britain's principal surveillance law is too vague and is almost certainly being interpreted to allow the agency to conduct surveillance that flouts privacy safeguards set out in the European convention on human rights (ECHR).The inadequacies, it says, have created a situation where GCHQ staff are potentially able to rely "on the gaps in the current statutory framework to commit serious crime with impunity".

Last year, Hague told MPs: "It has been suggested GCHQ uses our partnership with the US to get around UK law, obtaining information that they cannot legally obtain in the UK. I wish to be absolutely clear that this accusation is baseless."However, the legal advice poses awkward new questions about the framework GCHQ operates within, the role of ministers and the legality of transferring bulk data to other spy agencies.The advice makes clear Ripa does not allow GCHQ to conduct mass surveillance on communications between people in the UK, even if the data has briefly left British shores because the call or email has travelled to an internet server overseas.

The legal advice has been sent to the 46 members of the all-party parliamentary group on drones, which is chaired by the Labour MP, Tom Watson.

When Western intelligence agencies began in the early 1990s to intercept telexes from an Iranian university to foreign high technology firms, intelligence analysts believed they saw the first signs of military involvement in Iran’s nuclear programme. That suspicion led to U.S. intelligence assessments over the next decade that Iran was secretly pursuing nuclear weapons. The supposed evidence of military efforts to procure uranium enrichment equipment shown in the telexes was also the main premise of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s investigation of Iran’s nuclear programme from 2003 through 2007. But the interpretation of the intercepted telexes on which later assessments were based turned out to have been a fundamental error. The analysts, eager to find evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons programme, had wrongly assumed that the combination of interest in technologies that could be used in a nuclear programme and the apparent role of a military-related institution meant that the military was behind the procurement requests.