Controversial proposals to "snoop" on every email, phone call and text message have been driven by a warning from spies that new technology has "eroded" their ability to eavesdrop on terrorists and criminals.
The new measures would force internet firms to install hardware enabling GCHQ to examine 'on demand' details of any phone call, text message or email, and any website visited Photo: PA
By Jason Lewis, Investigations Editor, and David Barrett 8:50AM BST 08 Apr 2012
GCHQ, the Government's listening post, have grown increasingly concerned that modern internet technology has left them unable to intercept calls which use new technology instead of traditional phone systems.
Systems known as Voice Over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, route telephone calls over the world wide web.
They include computer to computer calling systems like Skype, but also many of the discount phone deals offered to make calls abroad from landlines.
Senior intelligence sources with detail knowledge of the problem said GCHQ had seen their access to telephone intercept information "eroded" by the use of the internet telephone services.
A highly placed source said: "We need to take action to maintain the continued availability of communications data to the police and other agencies investigating criminality and it is true that the ability of these agencies to get access is eroding due to changes in communications technology and usage."
Plans for the controversial move to make internet and phone companies keep a record of every email, phone call, text message and message on social networks such as Facebook, were first disclosed by The Sunday Telegraph in February.
They are at the centre of mounting concern from civil liberties groups and backbench members of both Coalition parties, with senior Conservative backbenchers now increasingly outspoken in opposition to the measures.
The new measures would force internet firms to install hardware enabling GCHQ to examine "on demand" and in "real time" details of any phone call, text message or email, and any website visited.
Last week Theresa May, the Home Secretary and Ken Clarke, the Justice Secretary, used a joint letter to attempt to calm the unease among backbenchers.
But security sources last week offered the most explicit explanation for the measure yet.
The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, pointed to a statement given to the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee by Sir David Pepper, the then head of GCHQ, four years ago, in which he warned of the problems it was facing due to the growth of this technology, and which was not widely published at the time.
He said: "One of the greatest challenges for GCHQ is to maintain its intercept capability in the face of rapidly evolving communications technology. This relates in particular to the growth in internet-based communications and voice over internet telephony.
"The internet uses a very different approach to communications. Rather than having any sense of fixed lines... communications are broken up... whether you are sending an email or any other form of internet communication... packets are then routed around the network and may go in any one of a number of different routes... (This is) the biggest change in telecoms technology since the invention of the telephone. It is a complete revolution..."
The rest of Sir John's testimony on the subject was blacked out on national security grounds as were the words of MI5 director general Jonathan Evans, who is believed to have confirmed that the technology was causing the Security Service real difficulties.
It is understood that in the last few years GCHQ has been working on ways to get around the problems caused by this use of the internet but its success or failure is highly classified.
However it was hoped that the new legislation being mooted by the Coalition Government would have helped the intelligence services by allowing so-called Deep Packet Inspection equipment to be installed on the UK network.
Until now intercepted telephone conversations have proved crucial in building up an intelligence picture of terrorists and criminals' operations. Calls can only be intercepted with a warrant from the Home Secretary, and special equipment at GCHQ is used.
Land line phone conversations are relatively easy to intercept, using equipment installed at telephone exchanges and satellite ground stations, but internet calls are virtually impossible to listen in on unless a bug is installed on the computer being used to send or receive it.
Increasingly it is not just Skype and similar calls between computers which are routed over the internet, but also calls from landlines, often those made through alternative call providers which offer cheap deals for long-distance and international calls.
Once the information contained in a conversation is sent over the internet it is broken up into tiny pieces, or packets, and sent using myriad different routes and is only reassembled at the other end by the computer receiving the "call".
In the United States technology has already been adopted which can intercept internet phonecalls. The National Security Agency with cooperation from telecoms giant AT&T, is using "Deep Packet Inspection technology" for internet traffic surveillance. It is used to find which packets are carrying e-mail or an internet telephone call. A similar system is also in use by the US Department of Defense.
But this form of internet sifting is highly controversial and is also used in countries including China and Iran to censor certain internet activity.
The reasons put forward by secuirty sources may not allay the fears of critics however.
Last night Gus Hosein, of Privacy International, said: "We don't want deep packet inspection 'black boxes' to be installed because it opens the door to all kinds of intrusion into private communications.
"The Government are kidding themselves if they think as soon as they have the black boxes they'll be able to check everyone's VOIP calls, and so on, because everything is encrypted.
"Unless GCHQ have a bit of magic we don't know about it would take an impossible amount of computational power to break all that encryption."
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