New NSA leaked documents indicate the UK collects data from a base in the Middle East

Aug 23, 2013 06:06 GMT  ·  By

The United Kingdom might be trying to look all innocent when it comes to mass surveillance, but it looks like things aren’t as they want us all to believe.

After revealing that the GCHQ was actively working alongside the NSA and providing the American intelligence agency with local data, new leaked documents indicate the UK is actually running a secret Internet monitoring station in the Middle East, used to intercept and process emails, telephone calls and web traffic.

The Independent reports the station taps into and extracts data from the underwater fibre-optic cables passing through the area.

According to the report, all data is processed and passed to GCHQ and shared with the NSA.

For security purposes, the location of the base was not revealed, but information about its activity comes straight from some of Edward Snowden’s leaked NSA documents.

The base is apparently part of a larger surveillance program that has been mentioned in the past, named “Tempora,” which has an overall goal to intercept global digital communications.

It was created under the signature of David Miliband, who then took up the position of Foreign Secretary. The warrant gave the GCHQ permission to monitor, store and analyze data passing through the fiber-optic cables linking up the Internet around the world.

Reports regarding the involvement of the United Kingdom in mass surveillance alongside the National Security Agency from the United States are bound to intensify in the immediate future as The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald promised to focus his efforts on documents linked to this matter.

The statement from Greenwald came after his partner, David Miranda, was detained in the Heathrow airport for nine hours under terrorist laws, despite being asked only about the documents in his possession that he was supposed to deliver to the journalist.

Update: Edward Snowden denies handing out NSA documents to The Independent, says the UK government is behind the information