page_title: Mass surveillance in the United Kingdom
section_title: Telecommunications Act 1984
hierarchical_section_title: Mass surveillance in the United Kingdom / Telecommunications Act 1984
caption_attribution_description: Government Communications Headquarters, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England. Built 2002. Quote from the GCHQ website: “Employing over 6,000 people from a range of diverse backgrounds, we strive to keep Britain safe and secure by working with our partners in the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and MI5. Our headquarters is based in Cheltenham, with regional hubs in Scarborough, Bude, Harrogate and Manchester”. Looking south-east from a Piper Cherokee Warrior (reg G-BBXW) during a pleasure flight from Gloucestershire Airport.
context_page_description: The use of electronic surveillance by the United Kingdom grew from the development of signal intelligence and pioneering code breaking during World War II. In the post-war period, the Government Communications Headquarters was formed and participated in programmes such as the Five Eyes collaboration of English-speaking nations. This focused on intercepting electronic communications, with substantial increases in surveillance capabilities over time. A series of media reports in 2013 revealed bulk collection and surveillance capabilities, including collection and sharing collaborations between GCHQ and the United States' National Security Agency. These were commonly described by the media and civil liberties groups as mass surveillance. Similar capabilities exist in other western European countries, such as France.
  Surveillance of electronic communications in the United Kingdom is controlled by laws made in the UK Parliament. In particular, access to the content of private messages must be authorised by a warrant signed by a Secretary of State. In addition European Union data privacy law applies in UK law.
context_section_description: The use of the Telecommunications Act 1984 for communications data collection, and the lack of oversight of this capability, was highlighted in the April 2014 report of the Home Affairs Committee of the House of Commons on Counter-terrorism. This was reiterated in the March 2015 report of the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament on Privacy and Security. Section 94 of the Telecommunications Act 1984 allows a Secretary of State to give providers of public electronic communications networks "directions of a general character… in the interests of national security", which may be protected from disclosure. The Act also gives the government certain powers to block foreign involvement in the critical national infrastructure of the United Kingdom. In November 2015, it was revealed MI5 had been using the Telecommunications Act 1984 to collect phone data in bulk for a decade.
caption: Government Communications Headquarters, Cheltenham, England (2017)
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