Chatham House | By: Emily Taylor | GPE – September 23, 2017:
Our online intelligence services need freedom from the state.
Originally published September 18, 2017: Until 1994, GCHQ, the British signals intelligence agency, didn’t officially exist. Now, it has emerged out of the shadows to take a very public role at the heart of British cybersecurity.
Public accountability for intelligence services is crucial to any democracy but, as the recent WannaCry ransomware attack showed, there are inevitable conflicts of interest between the role of intelligence services and network safety.
The past seven years have seen a dramatic change in profile for GCHQ. While the number of police officers has been cut by 14 per cent since 2010, GCHQ’s staff numbers – according to the Home Office – have grown by more than ten per cent in the same period.
At the same time, it has been loaded with additional responsibilities, including the fight against distribution of child-abuse images on the dark web, money laundering and financial fraud.
This was made official when, in February 2017, it assumed responsibility for making the UK “the safest place to do business online” through the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).
This rapid increase in power is the result of GCHQ’s own competence. A dearth of expertise in government has led to a reliance on the intelligence service to fill gaps.
However, one of the core roles of intelligence agencies is covert operations. Weaving public-safety responsibility into a secret and secretive operation is always likely to cause conflicts of interest. WannaCry was an example of a state-developed cyber weapon turned against its creators.
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