GCHQ has opened up on the record for the first time. And its chosen vehicle is the Times. What’s going on?

The UK surveillance agency GCHQ had only a small public relations team up until June 2013. As the most secretive of the intelligence agencies, it did not really need anything more. The duties were not arduous, with inquiries from the national media invariably met with a blunt refusal to comment.



That attitude has not survived the shock of former CIA and NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, who leaked tens of thousands of documents exposing GCHQ’s innermost secrets. Today, GCHQ’s new and expanding PR team is increasingly sophisticated, open to engagement with journalists in ways that were inconceivable before Snowden.

Just how far the agency has shifted over the last two years is evident from Wednesday’s front-page treatment in the Times, a huge picture of GCHQ’s “Doughnut” HQ and an article by Ben Macintyre boasting of unprecedented access, including being allowed to visit “the Cage”, which houses a machine generating government encryption codes. Further GCHQ and other intelligence-related reports followed on pages six, seven, eight and nine.

Why is GCHQ doing this? It is partly that the agency acknowledges it is better to engage with the media rather than try to ignore it, as it did initially in the first few months of the Snowden revelations. But mainly it is about winning public trust.

The intelligence agencies become indignant at the suggestion that they have lost public trust as a result of the Snowden revelations. They point to polling figures suggesting they enjoy the support of two-thirds or more of the public. That is largely true, with fears about terrorism overriding concerns about privacy.

But that ratio is not good enough for GCHQ and its sister intelligence agencies, MI6 and MI5. The sceptics might be a minority but it is a problematic minority. It ranges from privacy campaigners and the odd quizzical MP through to the increasing numbers of the public joking about the government listening in on their smartphones.

It is no coincidence that the Times articles appeared just a week before expected publication of the government’s investigatory powers bill, which will set out a wide range of surveillance powers, ones that will be hotly debated in parliament.

The move out of the shadows is not unique to GCHQ. MI5’s director general, Andrew Parker, gave the first-ever interview by anyone in his post in September to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, again mainly about surveillance.

On Wednesday, Parker, speaking at the Lord Mayor’s lecture, said the bill will look at the legislative framework under which the intelligence agencies operate.

“We do not seek sweeping new intrusive powers in that legislation, but rather a modern legal framework that reflects the way that technology has moved on, and that allows us to continue to keep the country safe,” he said.

Few suggest that GCHQ and its sister agencies are some sort of Dark Tower, its staff intent on routinely abusing human rights. But there is still a debate to be had over where the line should be drawn between total security and total privacy.



Privacy campaigners argue that the access of the intelligence agencies to personal data has never been easier as a result of the technological changes of the last two decades. To rebalance this, they argue, some of these powers, primarily bulk data collection, need to be reined in. The intelligence agencies justify bulk data collection on the grounds that if there is a kidnapping or a terrorist attack, they need to look back to trace who has been in touch with whom.

That seems to be a reasonable premise, at least until the intelligence agencies are challenged to provide specific cases of when this has happened. At that point, recent adventures in transparency come to an abrupt stop, with the agencies pleading secrecy requirements.

The patchy history of the intelligence agencies with regards to human rights also demands proper oversight by parliament and the judiciary, both missing at present.

And there is the issue of the cosy relationship that existed until the Snowden revelations between the intelligence agencies and the big US internet companies in the handing over of personal data. That relationship is more fraught these days, the result of a customer backlash against the companies. The companies have or are in the process of introducing encryption as standard, a move the intelligence agencies say makes their work harder, especially British intelligence agencies seeking co-operation from US internet and social media organisations.

The intelligence agencies claimed that the Snowden revelations about their techniques lost them 30% of their capability, helping terrorists, paedophiles and international criminals. Again, when asked for specific examples, no evidence is forthcoming. Whether right or wrong, the lost ground has since been made up and GCHQ and the NSA have acquired even better surveillance tools.

The 6,000 staff at GCHQ represent a cross-section of British society, though with probably a higher proportion of mathematicians. There are Guardian readers among them, even though some dropped away after the Snowden revelations.



The staff tend to take a sophisticated view of the privacy issue. They want clear guidelines laid out in the proposed new legislation. They do not particularly want uncritical cheerleaders in the rightwing press or to hear supportive politicians say, ‘If you have nothing to hide, why should you fear if they look and listen?’

Inside GCHQ there are those whose animosity towards Snowden remains intense but who will acknowledge he did at least spark a much-needed debate. The onus remains on them to justify the need for powers such as bulk data collection.

Ewen MacAskill is a member of the Guardian team that won a Pulitzer prize for its reporting on the Snowden revelations.