Ad
Fibre-optic cable: Each day of the electronic dragnet is worth 20 petabytes of data (Photo: roshan1286)

UK spy scheme said to be larger than Prism

A British intelligence agency, GCHQ, has tapped into undersea fibre-optic cables to hoover up telephone conversations and Internet traffic, according to documents seen by The Guardian newspaper.

Codenamed "Tempora," the secret surveillance programme is said to be on an even larger scale than the US-led Prism scheme revealed by US whistleblower Edward Snowden earlier this month.

“They [GCHQ] are worse than the US,” Snowden, a former analyst at the US' National Security Agency (NSA...

Get EU news that matters

Back our independent journalism by becoming a supporting member

Already a member? Login here

Author Bio

Nikolaj joined EUobserver in 2012 and covers home affairs. He is originally from Denmark, but spent much of his life in France and in Belgium. He was awarded the King Baudouin Foundation grant for investigative journalism in 2010.

Fibre-optic cable: Each day of the electronic dragnet is worth 20 petabytes of data (Photo: roshan1286)

Tags

Author Bio

Nikolaj joined EUobserver in 2012 and covers home affairs. He is originally from Denmark, but spent much of his life in France and in Belgium. He was awarded the King Baudouin Foundation grant for investigative journalism in 2010.

Ad

Related articles

Ad
Ad