The “snooper’s charter” legislation extending the mass surveillance powers of the intelligence agencies will “cost lives in Britain”, a former US security chief has warned MPs and peers.



William Binney, a former technical director of the US National Security Agency (NSA), told parliamentarians that the plans for bulk collection of communications data tracking everyone’s internet and phone use are “99% useless” because they would swamp intelligence analysts with too much data.

He was particularly critical of a previously secret GCHQ surveillance system disclosed by the whistleblower Edward Snowden called Black Hole, which was built in 2008 and helps list everyone in the world who has ever visited a website.

“This approach costs lives, and has cost lives in Britain because it inundates analysts with too much data. It is 99% useless. Who wants to know everyone who has ever [been] at Google or the BBC? We have known for decades that that swamps analysts,” said Binney, who turned whistleblower after 36 years in which he conducted and led signals intelligence operations and research for the NSA.

Binney gave evidence on Wednesday to the committee of MPs and peers scrutinising Theresa May’s draft investigatory powers bill, which will codify and extend the existing bulk collection powers of the intelligence agencies, including the storage of records of every website or internet connection made by British citizens.

The former NSA director testified that while targeted data collection operations could help prevent terror attacks, “overcollection” of mass data undermined security and had consistently cost lives because of this “analysis paralysis”.

Binney told MPs that the 9/11 attacks on the US could have been prevented if the NSA had filtered the relevant data and not attempted to collect everything.

He said: “Sixteen months before the attacks on America, our organisation [Signit Automation Research Center – Sarc] was running a new method of finding terrorist networks that worked on focusing on ‘smart collection’. Their plan was rejected in favour of a much more expensive plan to collect all communications from everyone.

“The US large-scale surveillance plan failed. It had to be abandoned in 2005. Checks afterwards showed that communications from the terrorists had been collected, but not looked at in time.”

Binney said his experience as the lead NSA analyst for “strategic warning” concerning the Soviet Union and then Russia, and later dealing with terrorism, showed that “to be effective and timely we had to avoid burying our analysts”.

He said: “Our approach was totally different to the historic bulk collect and then word/phrase dictionary select-type approach in general use even to this day. In particular, we developed and deployed surveillance tools applying minimisation at the point(s) of collection. This approach reduces the burden on analysts required to review extremely large quantities of irrelevant material with consequent improvement to operational effectiveness.

“At the same time, it reduces the privacy burden affecting the large number of innocent and suspicion-free persons whose communications are accessible to our systems.”

He told MPs that “Britain should not go further down this road and risk making the same mistakes as my country did, or they will end up perpetuating the loss of life”.

Binney also said a targeted approach had the additional advantage that legally protected groups such as MPs, lawyers and journalists could have their communications screened out and excluded from bulk collection and analysis unless and a designated and targeted authorisation was in place.

The information commissioner, Christopher Graham, later told the committee that there should be a sunset clause in the legislation requiring parliament to review regularly how it is working. He said there was a huge risk in the amount of information that would be retained.

The question for MPs, Graham said, was under what regulatory regime should the intelligence agencies be allowed access to digital information records for law enforcement purposes. He said the government had yet to make a convincing case as to why information should be retained by internet service providers for a 12-month period.

Graham urged MPs to increase the penalties available to be imposed on those who abuse their position of trust by illegally exploiting or passing on data collected by the police, intelligence services and other government agencies. At present the highest penalty is a fine.

