YouTube video views, Facebook "likes" and Blogger
visits are among activities GCHQ has monitored in
real-time, according to the latest Snowden leaks.
Details of an alleged GCHQ programme codenamed
Squeaky Dolphin have been published by NBC News.
It reports that the UK cyber-spy agency showed off its
abilities to the US National Security Agency in 2012.
Facebook has since started encrypting its data, but
Google's YouTube and Blogger services remain
unencrypted.
Both firms have said that they did not give GCHQ
permission to access the data.
The alleged operation's leaked logo - showing a dolphin
holding a canister branded GTE - appears to refer to
Global Telecoms Exploitation, a GCHQ division believed
to be capable of collecting data from fibre-optic cables.
According to an earlier leak, published by the Guardian ,
GCHQ has been tapping fibre-optic cables to create a
"buffer" of information it could search through since at
least 2011, as part of a scheme called Tempora.
The paper said that by 2012 the agency had tapped
more than 200 cables - including transatlantic
communication links - and was able to process phone
and internet data taken from up to 46 of them at a
time.
GCHQ declined to comment on the specifics of the
latest report.
However, the prime minister has previously said that:
"I'm satisfied that the work these agencies do is not
only vital but is properly overseen."
Real-time activity
The NBC report is based on a presentation entitled
Psychology: A New Kind of Sigdev [signals
development]. It was part of the trove of documents
former NSA contractor Edward Snowden passed to
journalist Glenn Greenwald, who contributed to NBC's
report.
The papers refer to the use of Splunk Dashboard to
provide real-time analysis of how people use YouTube,
Facebook and Blogger.
Splunk is commercially available software designed to
let organisations "listen" to their own data.
Examples that GCHQ is said to have shown off include:
a table showing how
many people based
in the city of Lagos
looked at a specific
job vacancies blog
over a 24-hour
period
a graph showing
how many London-
based internet users
"liked" links about
former Defence
Secretary Liam Fox
on Facebook over a
week-long period
a pie chart
highlighting 20
trending YouTube video tags a day before planned
anti-government protests in Bahrain
Although the examples provided do not identify specific
users, NBC suggests this would have been possible to
do if GCHQ had access to such data.
"We have long been concerned about the possibility of
this kind of snooping, which is why we have continued
to extend encryption across more and more Google
services and links," a spokesman for Google told the
BBC.
"We do not provide any government, including the UK
government, with access to our systems. These
allegations underscore the urgent need for reform of
government surveillance practices."
GCHQ says that its surveillance activities are carried out
in accordance with UK laws
A spokesman for Facebook added: "Network security is
an important part of the way we protect user
information, which is why we finished moving our site
traffic to HTTPS [encryption] by default last year,
implemented Perfect Forward Secrecy, and continue to
strengthen all aspects of our network."
Twitter also targeted
US and UK officials have stressed that while they may
scoop up a lot of data, their actual use of it is targeted.
"All of GCHQ's work is carried out in accordance with a
strict legal and policy framework which ensures that our
activities are authorised, necessary and proportionate,
and that there is rigorous oversight, including from the
secretary of state, the Interception and Intelligence
Services Commissioners and the Parliamentary
Intelligence and Security Committee," a spokeswoman
from GCHQ said.
"All our operational processes rigorously support this
position."
Other details included in the latest leaks include:
GCHQ agents referred to a study that indicated
Firefox users were those most prone to neuroticism,
while Internet Explorer users were those most likely
to be conscientious but least open to new
experiences
An earlier GCHQ operation dubbed Blackhole
involved exploiting what used to be unencrypted
data from Twitter in order to identify users and
target them with propaganda
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