UK surveillance probe goes public — sort of

The UK government has until now put up something of a wall of silence around its intelligence services’ surveillance activities, but there are signs that this wall might be partially dismantled.

In July 2013, a month after the PRISM scandal broke, the British Parliament’s intelligence oversight committee announced that the country’s spy services had not illegally used the American program to “access the content of private communications” of UK citizens -- they knew this because the spy services, namely NSA counterpart GCHQ, told them so. That said, the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) conceded that the laws it was talking about were a tad fuzzy and perhaps out-of-date, so the investigation quietly continued. Now, after months of further surveillance revelations that point to GCHQ itself as a major data-hoover, that inquiry is set to widen. The ISC said it would also look into the impact on people’s privacy, and would even hear evidence from the public. The reaction from privacy activists has been cautious, and understandably so.