[Infowarrior] - Jacqui's secret plan to 'Master the Internet'

[Richard Forno]

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/03/gchq_mti/
Jacqui's secret plan to 'Master the Internet'

'Climb down' on central database was 'a sideshow'

By Chris Williams

Posted in Government, 3rd May 2009 10:02 GMT

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Spy chiefs are already spending hundreds of millions of pounds on a  
mass internet surveillance system, despite Jacqui Smith's announcement  
earlier this week that proposals for a central warehouse of  
communications data had been dumped on privacy grounds.

The system - uncovered today by The Register and The Sunday Times (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6211101.ece 
) - is being installed under a GCHQ project called Mastering the  
Internet (MTI). It will include thousands of deep packet inspection  
probes inside communications providers' networks, as well as massive  
computing power at the intelligence agency's Cheltenham base, "the  
concrete doughnut".

Sources with knowledge of the project said contacts have already been  
awarded to private sector partners.

One said: "In MTI, computing resources are not measured by the  
traditional capacities or speeds such as Gb, Tb, Megaflop or  
Teraflop... but by the metric tonne!.. and they have lots of them."

The American techology giant Lockheed Martin is understood to have  
bagged a £200m deal. The BAE-owned British firm Detica, which has  
close links to MI5 and MI6, as well as to GCHQ, has also been signed  
up to help on MTI.

A spokeswoman for GCHQ said the agency does not comment on individual  
contracts. "GCHQ works with a broad range of industry partners to  
deliver a complex portfolio of technical projects," she said. Detica  
also declined to comment, and Lockheed Martin did not return calls.

Sources said MTI received approval and funding of more than £1bn over  
three years in the October 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review. GCHQ,  
like MI5 and MI6, is funded out of the opaque Single Intelligence  
Account. For 2007/8 the planned budget for the three agencies was over  
£1.6bn.

GCHQ began work on MTI soon after it was approved. Records of job  
advertising by the agency show that in April 2008 it was seeking a  
Head of Major Contracts with "operational responsibility for the  
‘Mastering the Internet’ (MTI) contract". The new senior official was  
to be paid an annual salary of up to £100,000.

The advertisment also indicated that the head of Major Contracts would  
be in charge of procurement on MTI and be expected to forge close  
links with the private sector.

According to sources, MTI is a core piece of the government's  
Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP). On Monday of last week,  
the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced that under IMP, rather than  
build a central warehouse, responsibility for storing details of who  
contacts whom, when and where will be imposed on communications  
providers.

The news was welcomed by privacy advocates and civil liberties  
campaigners, but sources described it as a "side show" compared to the  
massively increased surveillance capability that MTI will deliver. It  
will grant intelligence staff in Cheltenahm complete visibility of UK  
Internet traffic, allowing them to remotely configure their deep  
packet inspection probes to intercept data - both communications data  
and the communication content - on demand.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said: "We opposed the big  
brother database because it gave the state direct access to  
everybody’s communications. But this network of black boxes achieves  
the same thing via the back door."

GCHQ's spokeswoman said: "GCHQ does not discuss 'how' we use data, as  
this may lead to revelations about our capability which damage  
national security.

"GCHQ is constantly updating its systems in order to maintain and  
renew its capability."

Advocates of MTI and IMP say they are essential if intelligence  
agencies are to maintain their capability to monitor terrorist and  
other criminal networks.

A Home Office consultation on the storage of communications data is  
now open (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/27/imp_consultation/).  
Meanwhile, work and spending on the all-seeing system to intercept and  
retrieve it is already underway. ®