You Can Now Find Out Whether UK GCHQ Spied On You

The UK’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal recently ruled that before December 2014 GCHQ, UK’s electronic spying agency,  had acted illegally by obtaining data from the National Security Agency’s surveillance dragnets. Following the ruling an advocacy organization called Privacy International has now put together an online form through which you can now file a request to find out whether the agency spied on any of your electronic communications in the past.

The magic words are in the past. IPT ruled against GCHQ’s retrospective spying so Privacy International’s campaign will only tell you if you were spied upon in the past, it won’t reveal whether the agency is spying on you right now.

Under the Prism program NSA collected data directly from internet companies based in the U.S. and with Upstream it tapped directly into internet cables to pull data.

GCHQ then received that data as and when required and this campaign is limited to NSA’s dragnets. So if the GCHQ started the spying on its own that won’t be revealed as well.

Everybody can file a request since the campaign isn’t limited to U.S. or British citizens. In order to make a request you will have to submit an email address and phone number to Privacy International.

This may only reveal the tip of the iceberg as Privacy International says that those who want “the most comprehensive records searched” will have to divulge “much more personal information.”

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Web
Tags: GCHQ