UK: UK spies on Ireland
01 May 1999
For at least ten years, until 1998, the UK government authorised all telecommunications from the Irish Republic to be monitored. The key interception site was at Capenhurst in Cheshire where the UK's surveillance agency GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) spent ú20 million creating a highly sophisticated interception operation. The official title was the Ministry of Defence's (MOD) Electronic Test Facility (EFT). The Cheshire site, leased from British Nuclear Fuels Limited, was put up for sale when a new Irish communications system replaced the radio links that it was built to intercept. According the Independent newspaper the eavesdropping operation has now been superceded by an "even more powerful network of Ministry of Defence-owned optical fibres cables running in a ring around England". The operation was revealed by Channel 4 News.
From the specially-built eight-floor tower faxes, e-mails, telexes and data communications were intercepted. The advanced electronic equipment and programmes were used to extract and sort the thousands of communications passing through every hour of the day. Communications were scanned for their content using key words and subjects of interest and phone calls could be targeted according to the numbers dialled or by identifying the voice of the speaker. GCHQ, and its US counterpart NSA (National Security Agency), have developed sophisticated libraries of voice profiles to use in scanning international messages. Within the MOD the project was classified "Top Secret Umbra", with the codeword "Umbra" indicating a sensitive signals intelligence operation.
Local people were urged not to talk about the site and in return were given free fencing and double glazing. Service vans were repainted with the logos of British Telecom and other public utilities to disguise the operation.
The reason for mounting the operation was to combat terrorism. But in practice the product of the "trawling" operation produced vast quantities of political and economic intelligence for the UK quite unconnected with terrorism. Another GCHQ surveillance operation, not specifically directed at Ireland, is said to intercept most Internet data and e-mails as they pass through a "key Internet site in Docklands, east London".
Independent, 16.7.99.