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Planned surveillance laws in the UK are "totalitarian” and the bulk collection of people’s data makes people "more vulnerable” to terrorist attacks, a National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower has said.

William Binney, who worked in senior positions at the NSA for 30 years before leaving and speaking publicly about the agencies practices, has said the mass collection "costs lives" as it overwhelms security services with information.


Speaking to WIRED ahead of his appearance in front of the government’s Joint Select Committee that is scrutinising the government’s controversial draft Investigatory Powers Bill (IP Bill), Binney said the legislation should be rewritten. "Fundamentally, bulk acquisition is a major impediment to success by analysts and law enforcement,” he said. Instead of mass collection of personal information the former NSA technical director said a targeted surveillance approach, built on previous intelligence should be used to track down suspected criminals. "Retroactively analysing people, anybody you want, any time you want, that's certainly possible with bulk acquisition of data but that's certainly not what democracies are built on. That's what totalitarian states are built on,” Binney told WIRED.

The IP Bills explanation of bulk data collectio Draft Investigatory Powers Bill

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The IP Bill, which was announced by Home Secretary Theresa May in November, legitimises the bulk collection of data – including data that has been intercepted as well as communications and internet use information. "Access to bulk data is crucial to monitor known and high-priority threats but is also a vital tool in discovering new targets and identifying emerging threats," the bill states.

It was previously possible for security agencies in the UK to mass collect data but was not revealed until details were published by Edward Snowden. In June 2013 the Guardian, with documents from Snowden, revealed spy agency GCHQ's Tempora programme was hoovering up an entire month’s worth of metadata and three days worth of content from internet use around the UK.


As the bill was announced by May it was also confirmed that Mi5 had secretly collected phone data for 10 years and former deputy prime minister Nick Cleggtold the Guardian only a handful of MPs had known about the previous mass surveillance.

The 299-page draft bill from the government states that communications companies -- which will include internet and mobile providers -- will have to store internet browsing histories for a year. The internet connection records that will have to be stored will include each website visited by a person but not the specific webpage.

However, May also introduced extra judicial 'safeguards' for the protection of data. For security services to see a UK citizen’s records they must obtain a targeted warrant, the data will already be stored without the need for a warrant.

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Other snooping powers included in the IP Bill are: the ability for law enforcement to bulk hack into phones and devices; protection of MPs communications to be made law; and a new interception of communications commissioner and judicial commissioners to approve the warrant process.


In order to see this embed, you must give consent to Social Media cookies. Open my cookie preferences. Fireworks coming at #IPBill committee tomorrow. William Binney, former NSA Tech Dir says GCHQ's mass snooping doesn't work & so people die. — Paul Strasburger (@LordStras) January 5, 2016

On the collection of bulk data Binney said the UK government should "redirect” intelligence agencies and law enforcement to targeted surveillance. This, he told WIRED, should be "based on probable cause and developing knowledge about the targets and make sure they qualify for things like warrants”.

He said an approach of collecting mass amounts of data should be dropped as it doesn't help to prevent terrorism, something analysis of NSA phone record collection has also supported.

"It doesn't give people security it makes them more vulnerable; we're more vulnerable than we've ever been because of this," Binney, who was involved in the NSA's intelligence gathering operations, said.


Binney, who left the US security agency in 2011, has since claimed the agency has wasted public money and spoken against it in court proceedings, He went public with his analysis of the NSA and global surveillance picture after having his security level removed after being questioned, although no wrongdoing was found, by the FBI and arrested at gunpoint while in the shower.

Binney said politicians in the UK shouldn't be led by security staff. "They [politicians] don't really have the expertise technically, or they don't really understand what it takes to do this kind of mission, so they fundamentally buy into anything the intelligence agencies say," he said.

Later today Binney will tell the select committee of MPs and Lords that the GCHQ surveillance system called BLACK HOLE, which is reported to collect a list everyone in the world who has visited websites, is dangerous for security. "This approach costs lives, and has cost lives in Britain because it inundates analysts with too much data," he will tell the committee. "It is 99per cent useless. Who wants to know everyone who has ever looked at Google or the BBC? We have known for decades that that swamps analysts."