Just after midnight on 16 August, I was called by LBC in London for a comment on a breaking story on the front page of The Daily Telegraph about British spies hacking the EU. Even though I had just retired to bed, the story was just too irresistible, but a radio interview is always too short to do justice to such a convoluted tale.
For those who cannot get past the Telegraph paywall, the gist is that that the EU has accused the British intelligence agencies of hacking the EU's side of the negotiations.
Apparently, some highly sensitive and negative slides about the British Prime Minister's plan for Brexit, the Chequers Plan, had landed in the lap of the British government, which then lobbied the EU to suppress publication.
Before dismissing the latter option as a conspiracy theory, the British spies do have form.
GCHQ's incestuous relationship with America's NSA gives it massively greater capabilities than other European intelligence agencies, and the EU knows this well, which is why it is concerned to retain access to the UK's defence and security powers post-Brexit, and also why it has jumped to these conclusions about hacking.
The IPA legalised what GCHQ had previously been doing illegally post-9/11, including bulk metadata collection, bulk data hacking, and bulk hacking of electronic devices.
So if GCHQ did indeed hack the EU, it is feasible that the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister remained ignorant of what was going on, despite being legally required to sign off on such operations.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-11-30/did-british-spies-really-hack-eu-negotiations
For those who cannot get past the Telegraph paywall, the gist is that that the EU has accused the British intelligence agencies of hacking the EU's side of the negotiations.
Apparently, some highly sensitive and negative slides about the British Prime Minister's plan for Brexit, the Chequers Plan, had landed in the lap of the British government, which then lobbied the EU to suppress publication.
Before dismissing the latter option as a conspiracy theory, the British spies do have form.
GCHQ's incestuous relationship with America's NSA gives it massively greater capabilities than other European intelligence agencies, and the EU knows this well, which is why it is concerned to retain access to the UK's defence and security powers post-Brexit, and also why it has jumped to these conclusions about hacking.
The IPA legalised what GCHQ had previously been doing illegally post-9/11, including bulk metadata collection, bulk data hacking, and bulk hacking of electronic devices.
So if GCHQ did indeed hack the EU, it is feasible that the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister remained ignorant of what was going on, despite being legally required to sign off on such operations.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-11-30/did-british-spies-really-hack-eu-negotiations
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