Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) is an
intelligence
Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. It can be described as t ...
and
security
Security is protection from, or resilience against, potential harm (or other unwanted coercion). Beneficiaries (technically referents) of security may be persons and social groups, objects and institutions, ecosystems, or any other entity or ...
organisation responsible for providing
signals intelligence
Signals intelligence (SIGINT) is the act and field of intelligence-gathering by interception of ''signals'', whether communications between people (communications intelligence—abbreviated to COMINT) or from electronic signals not directly u ...
(SIGINT) and
information assurance
Information assurance (IA) is the practice of assuring information and managing risks related to the use, processing, storage, and data transmission, transmission of information. Information assurance includes protection of the data integrity, inte ...
(IA) to the
government
A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a State (polity), state.
In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive (government), execu ...
and
armed forces
A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. Militaries are typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with their members identifiable by a ...
of the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
. Primarily based at
The Doughnut
The Doughnut is the nickname given (due to its resemblance to a doughnut) to the headquarters of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), a British cryptography and intelligence agency. It is located on a site in Benhall, Cheltenham ...
in the suburbs of
Cheltenham
Cheltenham () is a historic spa town and borough adjacent to the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire, England. Cheltenham became known as a health and holiday spa town resort following the discovery of mineral springs in 1716, and claims to be the mo ...
, GCHQ is the responsibility of the country's
Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
The secretary of state for foreign, commonwealth and development affairs, also known as the foreign secretary, is a Secretary of State (United Kingdom), secretary of state in the Government of the United Kingdom, Government of the United Kingdo ...
(Foreign Secretary), but it is not a part of the
Foreign Office
Foreign may refer to:
Government
* Foreign policy, how a country interacts with other countries
* Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in many countries
** Foreign Office, a department of the UK government
** Foreign office and foreign minister
* United ...
and its director ranks as a
Permanent Secretary
A permanent secretary is the most senior Civil Service (United Kingdom), civil servant of a department or Ministry (government department), ministry charged with running the department or ministry's day-to-day activities. Permanent secretaries are ...
.
GCHQ was originally established after the
First World War
World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
as the
Government Code and Cypher School
The Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) was a British signals intelligence agency set up in 1919. During the First World War, the British Army and Royal Navy had separate signals intelligence agencies, MI1b and NID25 (initially known as R ...
(GC&CS) and was known under that name until 1946. During the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
it was located at
Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park is an English country house and Bletchley Park estate, estate in Bletchley, Milton Keynes (Buckinghamshire), that became the principal centre of Allies of World War II, Allied World War II cryptography, code-breaking during the S ...
, where it was responsible for breaking the German
Enigma codes. There are two main components of GCHQ, the Composite Signals Organisation (CSO), which is responsible for gathering information, and the
National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), which is responsible for securing the UK's own communications. The Joint Technical Language Service (JTLS) is a small department and cross-government resource responsible for mainly technical language support and translation and interpreting services across government departments. It is co-located with GCHQ for administrative purposes.
In 2013, GCHQ received considerable media attention when the former
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and proces ...
contractor
Edward Snowden
Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is a former National Security Agency (NSA) intelligence contractor and whistleblower who leaked classified documents revealing the existence of global surveillance programs.
Born in 1983 in Elizabeth ...
revealed that the agency was in the process of collecting all online and telephone data in the UK via the
Tempora
Tempora is the codeword for a formerly-secret computer system that is used by the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). This system is used to buffer most Internet communications that are extracted from fibre-optic cables, so t ...
programme. Snowden's revelations began a spate of ongoing
disclosures of global surveillance. ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'' newspaper was forced to destroy computer hard drives with the files Snowden had given them because of the threats of a lawsuit under the Official Secrets Act. In June 2014, ''
The Register
''The Register'' (often also called El Reg) is a British Technology journalism, technology news website co-founded in 1994 by Mike Magee (journalist), Mike Magee and John Lettice. The online newspaper's Nameplate_(publishing), masthead Logo, s ...
'' reported that the information the government sought to suppress by destroying the hard drives related to the location of a "beyond top secret" GCHQ internet monitoring base in
Seeb
Al-Seeb, As Seeb, As Sib, or Seeb () is a coastal fishing province, located several kilometres northwest of Muscat, in northeastern Oman. At the 2020 census, it had a population of 470,878.
Landmarks include the Naseem Garden, the Royal Stables ...
, Oman, and the close involvement of
BT and
Cable & Wireless in intercepting internet communications.
Structure
GCHQ is led by the Director of GCHQ,
Anne Keast-Butler, and a Corporate Board, made up of executive and non-executive directors. Reporting to the Corporate Board are:
[(secondary) ]
*Sigint missions: comprising maths and
cryptanalysis
Cryptanalysis (from the Greek ''kryptós'', "hidden", and ''analýein'', "to analyze") refers to the process of analyzing information systems in order to understand hidden aspects of the systems. Cryptanalysis is used to breach cryptographic se ...
, IT and computer systems, linguistics and translation, and the intelligence analysis unit
*Enterprise: comprising applied research and emerging technologies, corporate knowledge and information systems, commercial supplier relationships, and
biometrics
Biometrics are body measurements and calculations related to human characteristics and features. Biometric authentication (or realistic authentication) is used in computer science as a form of identification and access control. It is also used t ...
*Corporate management: enterprise resource planning,
human resources
Human resources (HR) is the set of people who make up the workforce of an organization, business sector, industry, or economy. A narrower concept is human capital, the knowledge and skills which the individuals command. Similar terms include ' ...
, internal audit, and architecture
*National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).
[Ferris (2020)]
History
World War I
During the First World War, the
British Army
The British Army is the principal Army, land warfare force of the United Kingdom. the British Army comprises 73,847 regular full-time personnel, 4,127 Brigade of Gurkhas, Gurkhas, 25,742 Army Reserve (United Kingdom), volunteer reserve perso ...
and
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the naval warfare force of the United Kingdom. It is a component of His Majesty's Naval Service, and its officers hold their commissions from the King of the United Kingdom, King. Although warships were used by Kingdom ...
had separate signals intelligence agencies,
MI1b and
NID25 (initially known as Room 40) respectively.
Interwar Period
In 1919, the Cabinet's Secret Service Committee, chaired by
Lord Curzon
George Nathaniel Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (11 January 1859 – 20 March 1925), known as Lord Curzon (), was a British statesman, Conservative Party (UK), Conservative politician, explorer and writer who served as Viceroy of India ...
, recommended that a peacetime codebreaking agency should be created, a task which was given to the
Director of Naval Intelligence,
Hugh Sinclair
Admiral Sir Hugh Francis Paget Sinclair, (18 August 1873 – 4 November 1939), known as Quex Sinclair, was a British intelligence officer. He was Director of British Naval Intelligence between 1919 and 1921, and he subsequently helped to se ...
.
[Johnson, 1997, p. 44] Sinclair merged staff from NID25 and MI1b into the new organisation, which initially consisted of around 25–30 officers and a similar number of clerical staff. It was titled the "Government Code and Cypher School" (GC&CS), a cover-name which was chosen by Victor Forbes of the
Foreign Office
Foreign may refer to:
Government
* Foreign policy, how a country interacts with other countries
* Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in many countries
** Foreign Office, a department of the UK government
** Foreign office and foreign minister
* United ...
.
Alastair Denniston
Commander Alexander "Alastair" Guthrie Denniston (1 December 1881 – 1 January 1961) was a Scottish codebreaker, deputy head of the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) and hockey player. Denniston was appointed operational head of GC&CS ...
, who had been a member of NID25, was appointed as its operational head.
It was initially under the control of the
Admiralty and located in Watergate House, Adelphi, London.
Its public function was "to advise as to the security of codes and cyphers used by all Government departments and to assist in their provision", but also had a secret directive to "study the methods of cypher communications used by foreign powers". GC&CS officially formed on 1 November 1919, and produced its first decrypt prior to that date, on 19 October.

Before the Second World War, GC&CS was a relatively small department. By 1922, the main focus of GC&CS was on diplomatic traffic, with "no service traffic ever worth circulating"
and so, at the initiative of Lord Curzon, it was transferred from the Admiralty to the
Foreign Office
Foreign may refer to:
Government
* Foreign policy, how a country interacts with other countries
* Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in many countries
** Foreign Office, a department of the UK government
** Foreign office and foreign minister
* United ...
. GC&CS came under the supervision of
Hugh Sinclair
Admiral Sir Hugh Francis Paget Sinclair, (18 August 1873 – 4 November 1939), known as Quex Sinclair, was a British intelligence officer. He was Director of British Naval Intelligence between 1919 and 1921, and he subsequently helped to se ...
, who by 1923 was both the Chief of
SIS and Director of GC&CS.
In 1925, both organisations were co-located on different floors of Broadway Buildings, opposite
St. James's Park.
Messages decrypted by GC&CS were distributed in blue-jacketed files that became known as "BJs". In the 1920s, GC&CS was successfully reading Soviet Union diplomatic cyphers. However, in May 1927, during a row over clandestine Soviet support for the
General Strike
A general strike is a strike action in which participants cease all economic activity, such as working, to strengthen the bargaining position of a trade union or achieve a common social or political goal. They are organised by large coalitions ...
and the distribution of subversive propaganda, Prime Minister
Stanley Baldwin
Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley (3 August 186714 December 1947), was a British statesman and Conservative politician who was prominent in the political leadership of the United Kingdom between the world wars. He was prime ministe ...
made details from the decrypts public.
World War II
During the Second World War, GC&CS was based largely at
Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park is an English country house and Bletchley Park estate, estate in Bletchley, Milton Keynes (Buckinghamshire), that became the principal centre of Allies of World War II, Allied World War II cryptography, code-breaking during the S ...
, in present-day
Milton Keynes
Milton Keynes ( ) is a city status in the United Kingdom, city in Buckinghamshire, England, about north-west of London. At the 2021 Census, the population of Milton Keynes urban area, its urban area was 264,349. The River Great Ouse forms t ...
, working on understanding the German
Enigma machine
The Enigma machine is a cipher device developed and used in the early- to mid-20th century to protect commercial, diplomatic, and military communication. It was employed extensively by Nazi Germany during World War II, in all branches of the W ...
and
Lorenz cipher
The Lorenz SZ40, SZ42a and SZ42b were German Rotor machine, rotor stream cipher machines used by the German Army (Wehrmacht), German Army during World War II. They were developed by C. Lorenz AG in Berlin. The model name ''SZ'' is derived from ' ...
s. In 1940, GC&CS was working on the diplomatic codes and ciphers of 26 countries, tackling over 150 diplomatic cryptosystems. Senior staff included
Alastair Denniston
Commander Alexander "Alastair" Guthrie Denniston (1 December 1881 – 1 January 1961) was a Scottish codebreaker, deputy head of the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) and hockey player. Denniston was appointed operational head of GC&CS ...
,
Oliver Strachey
Oliver Strachey CBE (3 November 1874 – 14 May 1960), a British civil servant in the Foreign Office, was a cryptographer from World War I to World War II.
Life and work
Strachey was a son of Sir Richard Strachey, colonial administrator and J ...
,
Dilly Knox
Alfred Dillwyn "Dilly" Knox, CMG (23 July 1884 – 27 February 1943) was an English classics scholar and papyrologist at King's College, Cambridge and a codebreaker. As a member of the Room 40 codebreaking unit he helped decrypt the Zimme ...
,
John Tiltman,
Edward Travis,
Ernst Fetterlein,
Josh Cooper,
Donald Michie
Donald Michie (; 11 November 1923 – 7 July 2007) was a British researcher in artificial intelligence. During World War II, Michie worked for the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, contributing to the effort to solve " Tunny ...
,
Alan Turing
Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist. He was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer ...
,
Gordon Welchman
William Gordon Welchman OBE (15 June 1906 – 8 October 1985) was an English mathematician. During World War II, he worked at Britain's secret decryption centre at Bletchley Park, where he was one of the most important contributors. In 1948, a ...
,
Joan Clarke
Joan Elisabeth Lowther Murray, MBE (''née'' Clarke; 24 June 1917 – 4 September 1996) was an English cryptanalyst and numismatist who worked as a code-breaker at Bletchley Park during the Second World War. Although she did not personally ...
,
Max Newman
Maxwell Herman Alexander Newman, FRS (7 February 1897 – 22 February 1984), generally known as Max Newman, was a British mathematician and codebreaker. His work in World War II led to the construction of Colossus, the world's first operatio ...
,
William Tutte,
I. J. (Jack) Good,
Peter Calvocoressi
Peter John Ambrose Calvocoressi (17 November 1912 – 5 February 2010) was a British lawyer, Liberal politician, historian, and publisher. He served as an intelligence officer at Bletchley Park during World War II.
Early years
Calvocoressi ...
and
Hugh Foss. The 1943 British–US Communication Intelligence Agreement,
BRUSA, connected the signal intercept networks of the GC&CS and the US
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and proces ...
(NSA). Equipment used to break enemy codes included the
Colossus computer
Colossus was a set of computers developed by British cryptanalysis, codebreakers in the years 1943–1945 to help in the cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher. Colossus used vacuum tube, thermionic valves (vacuum tubes) to perform Boolean algebra ...
. Colossus consisted of ten networked computers.
An outstation in the Far East, the
Far East Combined Bureau
The Far East Combined Bureau, an outstation of the British Government Code and Cypher School, was set up in Hong Kong in March 1935, to monitor Japanese, and also Chinese and Russian (Soviet) intelligence and radio traffic. Later it moved to Sing ...
, was set up in Hong Kong in 1935 and moved to Singapore in 1939. Subsequently, with the Japanese advance down the Malay Peninsula, the Army and RAF codebreakers went to the
Wireless Experimental Centre in Delhi, India. The Navy codebreakers in FECB went to
Colombo
Colombo, ( ; , ; , ), is the executive and judicial capital and largest city of Sri Lanka by population. The Colombo metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of 5.6 million, and 752,993 within the municipal limits. It is the ...
, Ceylon, then to
Kilindini
Kilindini Harbour is a large, natural deep-water inlet extending inland from Mombasa, Kenya. It is at its deepest center, although the controlling depth is the outer channel in the port approaches with a dredged depth of . It serves as the harbo ...
, near
Mombasa
Mombasa ( ; ) is a coastal city in southeastern Kenya along the Indian Ocean. It was the first capital of British East Africa, before Nairobi was elevated to capital status in 1907. It now serves as the capital of Mombasa County. The town is ...
, Kenya.
Post Second World War
GC&CS was renamed the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in June 1946.
The organisation was at first based in
Eastcote
Eastcote is a suburban area in the London Borough of Hillingdon, in West London, west Greater London, London.
In the Middle Ages, Eastcote was one of the three areas that made up the parish of Ruislip, under the name of Ascot. The name came fr ...
in northwest London, then in 1951 moved to the outskirts of
Cheltenham
Cheltenham () is a historic spa town and borough adjacent to the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire, England. Cheltenham became known as a health and holiday spa town resort following the discovery of mineral springs in 1716, and claims to be the mo ...
, setting up two sites at
Oakley and
Benhall. One of the major reasons for selecting Cheltenham was that the town had been the location of the headquarters of the
United States Army Services of Supply
The Services of Supply or "SOS" branch of the Army of the USA was created on 28 February 1942 by Executive Order Number 9082 "Reorganizing the Army and the War Department" and War Department Circular No. 59, dated 2 March 1942. Services of Supp ...
for the European Theater during the War, which built up a telecommunications infrastructure in the region to carry out its logistics tasks.
Following the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, US and British intelligence have shared information as part of the
UKUSA Agreement
The United Kingdom – United States of America Agreement (UKUSA, ) is a multilateral agreement for cooperation in signals intelligence between Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The alliance of intellig ...
. The principal aspect of this is that GCHQ and its US equivalent, the National Security Agency (NSA), share technologies, infrastructure and information.
GCHQ ran many
signals intelligence
Signals intelligence (SIGINT) is the act and field of intelligence-gathering by interception of ''signals'', whether communications between people (communications intelligence—abbreviated to COMINT) or from electronic signals not directly u ...
(SIGINT) monitoring stations abroad. During the early
Cold War
The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...
, the remnants of the
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, Crown colony, colonies, protectorates, League of Nations mandate, mandates, and other Dependent territory, territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It bega ...
provided a global network of ground stations which were a major contribution to the UKUSA Agreement; the US regarded
RAF Little Sai Wan in
Hong Kong
Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...
as the most valuable of these. The monitoring stations were largely run by inexpensive
National Service
National service is a system of compulsory or voluntary government service, usually military service. Conscription is mandatory national service. The term ''national service'' comes from the United Kingdom's National Service (Armed Forces) Act ...
recruits, but when this ended in the early 1960s, the increased cost of civilian employees caused budgetary problems. In 1965 a Foreign Office review found that 11,500 staff were involved in SIGINT collection (8,000 GCHQ staff and 3,500 military personnel), exceeding the size of the
Diplomatic Service
Diplomatic service is the body of diplomats and foreign policy officers maintained by the government of a country to communicate with the governments of other countries. Diplomatic personnel obtain diplomatic immunity when they are accredited to o ...
. Reaction to the
Suez War led to the eviction of GCHQ from several of its best foreign SIGINT collection sites, including the new
Perkar, Ceylon site and
RAF Habbaniya, Iraq. The staff largely moved to tented encampments on military bases in Cyprus, which later became the
Sovereign Base Area
Akrotiri and Dhekelia (), officially the Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (SBA), is a British Overseas Territory made of two non-contiguous areas on the island of Cyprus. The areas, which include British military bases and instal ...
.
During the
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis () in Cuba, or the Caribbean Crisis (), was a 13-day confrontation between the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union, when American deployments of Nuclear weapons d ...
,
GCHQ Scarborough intercepted radio communications from Soviet ships reporting their positions and used that to establish where they were heading. A copy of the report was sent directly to the White House Situation Room, providing initial indications of Soviet intentions with regards the US naval blockade of Cuba.
Duncan Campbell and
Mark Hosenball revealed the existence of GCHQ in 1976 in an article for ''
Time Out''; as a result, Hosenball was deported from the UK. GCHQ had a very low profile in the media until 1983 when the trial of
Geoffrey Prime, a
KGB
The Committee for State Security (, ), abbreviated as KGB (, ; ) was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, Joint State Polit ...
mole within it, created considerable media interest.
Trade union disputes

In 1984, GCHQ was the centre of a political row when, in the wake of strikes which affected Sigint collection, the
Conservative
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civiliza ...
government of
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013), was a British stateswoman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of th ...
prohibited its employees from belonging to a trade union, asserting that membership of a union was in conflict with
national security
National security, or national defence (national defense in American English), is the security and Defence (military), defence of a sovereign state, including its Citizenship, citizens, economy, and institutions, which is regarded as a duty of ...
.
The government offered £1,000 to each employee who agreed to give up their right to union membership. Following the breakdown of talks and the failure to negotiate a no-strike agreement, a number of mass national one-day strikes were held to protest against this decision, believed by some to be the first step to wider bans on trade unions. Appeals to British courts and the
European Commission of Human Rights
The European Commission of Human Rights was a special body of the Council of Europe.
From 1954 to the 1998 entry into force of European Convention on Human Rights#Protocol 11, Protocol 11 to the European Convention on Human Rights, individuals d ...
were unsuccessful. An appeal to the
International Labour Organization
The International Labour Organization (ILO) is a United Nations agency whose mandate is to advance social and economic justice by setting international labour standards. Founded in October 1919 under the League of Nations, it is one of the firs ...
resulted in a decision that the government's actions were in violation of
Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention.
A no-strike agreement was eventually negotiated and the ban lifted by the incoming
Labour government in 1997, with the Government Communications Group of the
Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) being formed to represent interested employees at all grades.
In 2000, a group of 14 former GCHQ employees, who had been dismissed after refusing to give up their union membership, were offered re-employment, which three of them accepted.
The legal case ''
'' is significant beyond the dispute, and even beyond trade union law, in that it held for the first time that the
royal prerogative
The royal prerogative is a body of customary authority, Privilege (law), privilege, and immunity recognised in common law (and sometimes in Civil law (legal system), civil law jurisdictions possessing a monarchy) as belonging to the monarch, so ...
is generally subject to
judicial review
Judicial review is a process under which a government's executive, legislative, or administrative actions are subject to review by the judiciary. In a judicial review, a court may invalidate laws, acts, or governmental actions that are in ...
, although the House of Lords ruled in favour of the Crown in this instance.
Post Cold War
1990s: Post-Cold War restructuring
The
Intelligence Services Act 1994 formalised the activities of the intelligence agencies for the first time, defining their purpose, and the British Parliament's
Intelligence and Security Committee
The Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament (ISC) is a statutory joint committee of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, appointed to oversee the work of the UK intelligence community.
The committee was established in 1994 by the ...
was given a remit to examine the expenditure, administration and policy of the three intelligence agencies.
The objectives of GCHQ were defined as working as "in the interests of national security, with particular reference to the defence and foreign policies of His Majesty's government; in the interests of the economic wellbeing of the United Kingdom; and in support of the prevention and the detection of serious crime".
During the introduction of the Intelligence Agency Act in late 1993, the former Prime Minister
Jim Callaghan had described GCHQ as a "full-blown bureaucracy", adding that future bodies created to provide oversight of the intelligence agencies should "investigate whether all the functions that GCHQ carries out today are still necessary."
In late 1993 civil servant
Michael Quinlan advised a deep review of the work of GCHQ following the conclusion of his "Review of Intelligence Requirements and Resources", which had imposed a 3% cut on the agency. The
Chief Secretary to the Treasury
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury is a senior ministerial office in the government of the United Kingdom and is the second most senior ministerial office in HM Treasury, after the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The office holder is always a full ...
,
Jonathan Aitken
Jonathan William Patrick Aitken (born 30 August 1942) is a British author, Church of England priest and former Conservative Party politician. Beginning his career in journalism, he was elected to Parliament in 1974 (serving until 1997), and wa ...
, subsequently held face to face discussions with the intelligence agency directors to assess further savings in the wake of Quinlan's review. Aldrich (2010) suggests that Sir
John Adye, the then Director of GCHQ performed badly in meetings with Aitken, leading Aitken to conclude that GCHQ was "suffering from out-of-date methods of management and out-of-date methods for assessing priorities". GCHQ's budget was £850 million in 1993, (£ as of ) compared to £125 million for the Security Service and SIS (MI5 and MI6). In December 1994 the businessman Roger Hurn was commissioned to begin a review of GCHQ, which was concluded in March 1995.
Hurn's report recommended a cut of £100 million in GCHQ's budget; such a large reduction had not been suffered by any British intelligence agency since the end of World War II.
The J Division of GCHQ, which had collected SIGINT on Russia, disappeared as a result of the cuts.
The cuts had been mostly reversed by 2000 in the wake of threats from
violent non-state actor
In international relations, violent non-state actors (VNSAs), also known as non-state armed actors or non-state armed groups (NSAGs), are individuals or groups that are wholly or partly independent of governments and which threaten or use viole ...
s, and risks from increased terrorism, organised crime and illegal access to nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
David Omand
Sir David Bruce Omand (born 15 April 1947) is a British former senior civil servant who served as the Director of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) from 1996 to 1997.
Background
Omand was born on 15 April 1947. His father, B ...
became the Director of GCHQ in 1996, and greatly restructured the agency in the face of new and changing targets and rapid technological change.
Omand introduced the concept of "Sinews" (or "SIGINT New Systems") which allowed more flexible working methods, avoiding overlaps in work by creating fourteen domains, each with a well-defined working scope.
The tenure of Omand also saw the construction of a modern new headquarters, intended to consolidate the two old sites at Oakley and Benhall into a single, more open-plan work environment.
Located on a 176-acre site in Benhall, it would be the largest building constructed for secret intelligence operations outside the United States.
Operations at GCHQ's
Chung Hom Kok
Chung Hom Kok ( or ) is an area in the southern Hong Kong Island in Hong Kong. It is a popular site for barbecue and human swimming, swimming with a beach and lifeguard services available from April to October. West of Stanley, Hong Kong, Stanl ...
listening station in Hong Kong ended in 1994.
GCHQ's Hong Kong operations were extremely important to their relationship with the NSA, who contributed investment and equipment to the station. In anticipation of the
transfer of Hong Kong to the Chinese government in 1997, the Hong Kong stations operations were moved to
Australian Defence Satellite Communications Station in
Geraldton
Geraldton (Wajarri language, Wajarri: ''Jambinu'', Wilunyu language, Wilunyu: ''Jambinbirri'') is a coastal city in the Mid West (Western Australia), Mid West region of Western Australia, north of the state capital, Perth.
As of the , Geraldt ...
in
Western Australia
Western Australia (WA) is the westernmost state of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Aust ...
.
Operations that used GCHQ's intelligence-gathering capabilities in the 1990s included the monitoring of communications of Iraqi soldiers in the
Gulf War
, combatant2 =
, commander1 =
, commander2 =
, strength1 = Over 950,000 soldiers3,113 tanks1,800 aircraft2,200 artillery systems
, page = https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-PEMD-96- ...
, of
dissident republican
Dissident republicans () are Irish republicans who do not support the Northern Ireland peace process. The peace agreements followed a 30-year conflict known as the Troubles, in which over 3,500 people were killed and 47,500 injured, and in whi ...
terrorists and the
Real IRA
The Real Irish Republican Army, or Real IRA (RIRA), was a Dissident republican, dissident Irish republican paramilitary group that aimed to bring about a United Ireland. It was formed in 1997 following a split in the Provisional Irish Republica ...
, of the various factions involved in the
Yugoslav Wars
The Yugoslav Wars were a series of separate but related#Naimark, Naimark (2003), p. xvii. ethnic conflicts, wars of independence, and Insurgency, insurgencies that took place from 1991 to 2001 in what had been the Socialist Federal Republic of ...
, and of the criminal
Kenneth Noye.
In the mid-1990s GCHQ began to assist in the investigation of
cybercrime
Cybercrime encompasses a wide range of criminal activities that are carried out using digital devices and/or Computer network, networks. It has been variously defined as "a crime committed on a computer network, especially the Internet"; Cyberc ...
.
2000s: Coping with the Internet
At the end of 2003, GCHQ moved in to its new building. Built on a circular plan around a large central courtyard, it quickly became known as
the Doughnut
The Doughnut is the nickname given (due to its resemblance to a doughnut) to the headquarters of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), a British cryptography and intelligence agency. It is located on a site in Benhall, Cheltenham ...
. At the time, it was one of the largest public-sector building projects in Europe, with an estimated cost of £337 million. The new building, which was designed by
Gensler
Gensler is a global design and architecture firm headquartered in San Francisco, California. It is the largest architecture firm in the world by revenue and number of architects.
In 2022, Gensler generated $1.785 billion in revenue, the most o ...
and constructed by
Carillion
Carillion plc was a British multinational construction and facilities management services company headquartered in Wolverhampton in the United Kingdom, prior to its liquidation in January 2018.
Carillion was created in July 1999, following a ...
, became the base for all of GCHQ's
Cheltenham
Cheltenham () is a historic spa town and borough adjacent to the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire, England. Cheltenham became known as a health and holiday spa town resort following the discovery of mineral springs in 1716, and claims to be the mo ...
operations.
The public spotlight fell on GCHQ in late 2003 and early 2004 following the sacking of
Katharine Gun after she leaked to ''
The Observer
''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. First published in 1791, it is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.
In 1993 it was acquired by Guardian Media Group Limited, and operated as a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' ...
'' a confidential email from agents at the United States'
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and proces ...
addressed to GCHQ officers about the wiretapping of UN delegates in the run-up to the
2003 Iraq war.
GCHQ gains its intelligence by monitoring a wide variety of communications and other electronic signals. For this, a number of stations have been established in the UK and overseas. The listening stations are at Cheltenham itself,
Bude
Bude (, locally or ; Cornish language, Cornish ) is a seaside town in north Cornwall, England, in the civil parish of Bude-Stratton and at the mouth of the River Neet (also known locally as the River Strat). It was sometimes formerly known as ...
,
Scarborough Scarborough or Scarboro may refer to:
People
* Scarborough (surname)
* Earl of Scarbrough
Places Australia
* Scarborough, Western Australia, suburb of Perth
* Scarborough, New South Wales, suburb of Wollongong
* Scarborough, Queensland, sub ...
,
Ascension Island
Ascension Island is an isolated volcanic island, 7°56′ south of the Equator in the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic Ocean. It is about from the coast of Africa and from the coast of South America. It is governed as part of the British Overs ...
, and with the United States at
RAF Menwith Hill
Royal Air Force Menwith Hill (RAF Menwith Hill) is a Royal Air Force List of Royal Air Force stations, station near Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England, which provides communications and intelligence support services to the United Kingdom and th ...
.
Ayios Nikolaos Station in Cyprus is run by the
British Army
The British Army is the principal Army, land warfare force of the United Kingdom. the British Army comprises 73,847 regular full-time personnel, 4,127 Brigade of Gurkhas, Gurkhas, 25,742 Army Reserve (United Kingdom), volunteer reserve perso ...
for GCHQ.
In March 2010, GCHQ was criticised by the
Intelligence and Security Committee
The Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament (ISC) is a statutory joint committee of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, appointed to oversee the work of the UK intelligence community.
The committee was established in 1994 by the ...
for problems with its IT security practices and failing to meet its targets for work targeted against cyber attacks.
As revealed by
Edward Snowden
Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is a former National Security Agency (NSA) intelligence contractor and whistleblower who leaked classified documents revealing the existence of global surveillance programs.
Born in 1983 in Elizabeth ...
in ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'', GCHQ spied on foreign politicians visiting the
2009 G-20 London Summit by eavesdropping phonecalls and emails and monitoring their computers, and in some cases even ongoing after the summit via
keystroke logging
Keystroke logging, often referred to as keylogging or keyboard capturing, is the action of recording (logging) the keys struck on a keyboard, typically covertly, so that a person using the keyboard is unaware that their actions are being monitore ...
that had been undertaken during the summit.
According to Edward Snowden, at that time GCHQ had two principal umbrella programs for collecting communications:
* "
Mastering the Internet
Mastering the Internet (MTI) is a mass surveillance project led by the British communications intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) budgeted at over £1 billion. According to reports in ''The Register'' and ''The Sund ...
" (MTI) for Internet traffic, which is extracted from fibre-optic cables and can be searched by using the
Tempora
Tempora is the codeword for a formerly-secret computer system that is used by the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). This system is used to buffer most Internet communications that are extracted from fibre-optic cables, so t ...
computer system.
* "
Global Telecoms Exploitation" (GTE) for telephone traffic.
GCHQ has also had access to the US internet monitoring programme
PRISM
PRISM is a code name for a program under which the United States National Security Agency (NSA) collects internet communications from various U.S. internet companies. The program is also known by the SIGAD . PRISM collects stored internet ...
from at least as far back as June 2010. PRISM is said to give the
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and proces ...
and FBI easy access to the systems of nine of the world's top internet companies, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, and Skype.
From 2013, GCHQ realised that public attitudes to Sigint had changed and its former unquestioned secrecy was no longer appropriate or acceptable. The growing use of the Internet, together with its inherent insecurities, meant that the communications traffic of private citizens were becoming inextricably mixed with those of their targets and openness in the handling of this issue was becoming essential to their credibility as an organisation. The Internet had become a "cyber commons", with its dominance creating a "second age of Sigint". GCHQ transformed itself accordingly, including greatly expanded Public Relations and Legal departments, and adopting public education in cyber security as an important part of its remit.
2010s: Disinformation, discord and division
In February 2014, ''The Guardian'', based on documents provided by Snowden, revealed that GCHQ had indiscriminately collected 1.8 million private Yahoo webcam images from users across the world. In the same month NBC and
The Intercept
''The Intercept'' is an American left-wing nonprofit news organization that publishes articles and podcasts online. ''The Intercept'' has published in English since its founding in 2014, and in Portuguese since the 2016 launch of the Brazilia ...
, based on documents released by Snowden, revealed the
Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group and the Computer Network Exploitation units within GCHQ. Their mission was cyber operations based on "dirty tricks" to shut down enemy communications, discredit, and plant misinformation on enemies.
These operations were 5% of all GCHQ operations according to a conference slideshow presented by the GCHQ.
Soon after becoming Director of GCHQ in 2014,
Robert Hannigan
Robert Peter Hannigan CMG (born 1965) is a cybersecurity specialist who has been Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, since 2021. He was a senior British civil servant who previously served as the director of the signals intelligence and crypto ...
wrote an article in the ''
Financial Times
The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and also published digitally that focuses on business and economic Current affairs (news format), current affairs. Based in London, the paper is owned by a Jap ...
'' on the topic of
internet surveillance
Computer and network surveillance is the monitoring of computer activity and data stored locally on a computer or data being transferred over computer networks such as the Internet. This monitoring is often carried out covertly and may be comple ...
, stating that "however much
arge US technology companiesmay dislike it, they have become the command and control networks of choice for terrorists and criminals" and that GCHQ and its sister agencies "cannot tackle these challenges at scale without greater support from the private sector", arguing that most internet users "would be comfortable with a better and more sustainable relationship between the
ntelligenceagencies and the tech companies". Since the
2013 global surveillance disclosures, large US technology companies have improved security and become less co-operative with foreign intelligence agencies, including those of the UK, generally requiring a US court order before disclosing data.
However the head of the UK technology industry group
techUK
The United Kingdom has a diverse cyber security community, interconnected in a complex network.
Public sector bodies
Legislative
According to a parliamentary committee the UK government is not doing enough to protect the nation against cyber ...
rejected these claims, stating that they understood the issues but that disclosure obligations "must be based upon a clear and transparent legal framework and effective oversight rather than, as suggested, a deal between the industry and government".
In 2015, documents obtained by ''
The Intercept
''The Intercept'' is an American left-wing nonprofit news organization that publishes articles and podcasts online. ''The Intercept'' has published in English since its founding in 2014, and in Portuguese since the 2016 launch of the Brazilia ...
'' from US
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and proces ...
whistleblower
Edward Snowden
Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is a former National Security Agency (NSA) intelligence contractor and whistleblower who leaked classified documents revealing the existence of global surveillance programs.
Born in 1983 in Elizabeth ...
revealed that GCHQ had carried out a mass-surveillance operation, codenamed
KARMA POLICE
"Karma Police" is a song by the English Rock music, rock band Radiohead, released on 25 August 1997 as the second single from their third studio album, ''OK Computer'' (1997). It features acoustic guitar and piano, and lyrical themes of insani ...
, since about 2008.
[Ryan Gallager]
Profiled: From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users' Online Identities
, ''The Intercept'' (25 September 2015). The operation swept up the
IP address
An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is assigned to a device connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. IP addresses serve two main functions: network interface i ...
of Internet users visiting websites, and was established with no public scrutiny or oversight. KARMA POLICE is a powerful spying tool in conjunction with other GCHQ programs because IP addresses could be cross-referenced with other data.
The goal of the program, according to the documents, was "either (a) a web browsing profile for every visible user on the internet, or (b) a user profile for every visible website on the internet."
In 2015, GCHQ admitted for the first time in court that it conducts computer hacking.
In 2017, US Press Secretary
Sean Spicer made allegations that GCHQ had conducted surveillance on US President
Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he served as the 45 ...
. These unfounded claims were based on statements made during an opinion piece in a FOX media segment. The US government formally apologised for the unfounded allegations and promised they would not be repeated.
British intelligence did gather information relating to Russian
contacts made by Trump's campaign team in the run-up to his election, which were passed on to US intelligence agencies.
On 31 October 2018, GCHQ joined
Instagram
Instagram is an American photo sharing, photo and Short-form content, short-form video sharing social networking service owned by Meta Platforms. It allows users to upload media that can be edited with Social media camera filter, filters, be ...
.
Personnel awards
GCHQ personnel are recognised annually by
King Charles III
Charles III (Charles Philip Arthur George; born 14 November 1948) is King of the United Kingdom and the 14 other Commonwealth realms.
Charles was born at Buckingham Palace during the reign of his maternal grandfather, King George VI, and ...
(formerly the Prince of Wales) at the
Prince of Wales's Intelligence Community Awards at
St James's Palace
St James's Palace is the most senior royal palace in London, England. The palace gives its name to the Court of St James's, which is the monarch's royal court, and is located in the City of Westminster. Although no longer the principal residence ...
or
Clarence House
Clarence House is a royal residence on The Mall in the City of Westminster, London. It was built in 1825–1827, adjacent to St James's Palace, for the royal Duke of Clarence, the future King William IV.
The four-storey house is faced in ...
alongside members of the
Security Service (MI5), and
Secret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 (MI numbers, Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of Human i ...
(MI6).
Awards and citations are given to teams within the agencies as well as individuals.
Security mission
As well as a mission to gather intelligence, GCHQ has for a long time had a corresponding mission to assist in the protection of the British government's own communications. When the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) was created in 1919, its overt task was providing security advice.
GC&CS's Security section was located in
Mansfield College, Oxford
Mansfield College, Oxford is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in Oxford, England. The college was founded in Birmingham in 1838 as a college for Nonconformist students. It moved to Oxford in 1886 and was renamed Mansfield Coll ...
during the Second World War.
In April 1946, GC&CS became GCHQ, and the now GCHQ Security section moved from Oxford to join the rest of the organisation at
Eastcote
Eastcote is a suburban area in the London Borough of Hillingdon, in West London, west Greater London, London.
In the Middle Ages, Eastcote was one of the three areas that made up the parish of Ruislip, under the name of Ascot. The name came fr ...
later that year.
LCSA
From 1952 to 1954, the intelligence mission of GCHQ relocated to Cheltenham; the Security section remained at Eastcote,
and in March 1954 became a separate, independent organisation: the London Communications Security Agency (LCSA),
which in 1958 was renamed to the London Communications-Electronic Security Agency (LCESA).
In April 1965, GPO and MOD units merged with LCESA to become the Communications-Electronic Security Department (CESD).
CESG
In October 1969, CESD was merged into GCHQ and becoming Communications-Electronic Security Group (CESG).
In 1977 CESG relocated from Eastcote to Cheltenham.
CESG continued as the UK National Technical Authority for
information assurance
Information assurance (IA) is the practice of assuring information and managing risks related to the use, processing, storage, and data transmission, transmission of information. Information assurance includes protection of the data integrity, inte ...
, including
cryptography
Cryptography, or cryptology (from "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logy, -logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of Adversary (cryptography), ...
. CESG did not manufacture security equipment, but worked with industry to ensure the availability of suitable products and services, while GCHQ itself funded research into such areas, for example to the
Centre for Quantum Computation at
Oxford University
The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest continuously operating u ...
and the
Heilbronn Institute for Mathematical Research at the
University of Bristol
The University of Bristol is a public university, public research university in Bristol, England. It received its royal charter in 1909, although it can trace its roots to a Merchant Venturers' school founded in 1595 and University College, Br ...
.
In the 21st century, CESG ran a number of assurance schemes such as CHECK,
CLAS,
Commercial Product Assurance (CPA) and CESG Assisted Products Service (CAPS).
Public key encryption
In 1970 the concept for
public-key encryption (
public key infrastructure
A public key infrastructure (PKI) is a set of roles, policies, hardware, software and procedures needed to create, manage, distribute, use, store and revoke digital certificates and manage public-key encryption.
The purpose of a PKI is to fac ...
) was developed and proven by GCHQ's
James H. Ellis. Ellis lacked the
number theory
Number theory is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers and arithmetic functions. Number theorists study prime numbers as well as the properties of mathematical objects constructed from integers (for example ...
skills required to build a workable system. In 1974 GCHQ mathematician
Clifford Cocks
Clifford Christopher Cocks (born 28 December 1950) is a British mathematician and cryptographer. In the early 1970s, while working at the United Kingdom Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), he developed an early public-key cryptogra ...
had developed a workable public key cryptography algorithm and a workable PKI system. Cocks's system was not available in the public domain until it was
declassified
Declassification is the process of ceasing a protective classification, often under the principle of freedom of information. Procedures for declassification vary by country. Papers may be withheld without being classified as secret, and event ...
in 1997.
By 1997 broader public key cryptography commercial technologies had been independently developed and had become well established, in areas such as
email security,
digital signatures, and
TLS (a fundamental
TCP/IP
The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suite are ...
security component) etc. Most notably in 1977 the
RSA algorithm had been developed (equivalent to Cocks's system) and by 1997 was extremely well established.
NCSC
In 2016, the
National Cyber Security Centre was established under GCHQ but located in London, as the UK's authority on cybersecurity. It absorbed and replaced CESG as well as activities that had previously existed outside GCHQ: the Centre for Cyber Assessment (CCA), Computer Emergency Response Team UK (CERT UK) and the cyber-related responsibilities of the
Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI).
Joint Technical Language Service
The Joint Technical Language Service (JTLS) was established in 1955, drawing on members of the small Ministry of Defence technical language team and others, initially to provide standard English translations for organisational expressions in any foreign language, discover the correct English equivalents of technical terms in foreign languages and discover the correct expansions of abbreviations in any language. The remit of the JTLS has expanded in the ensuing years to cover technical language support and interpreting and translation services across the UK Government and to local public sector services in
Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire ( , ; abbreviated Glos.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by Herefordshire to the north-west, Worcestershire to the north, Warwickshire to the north-east, Oxfordshire ...
and surrounding counties. The JTLS also produces and publishes foreign language working aids under
crown copyright
Crown copyright is a type of copyright protection. It subsists in works of the governments of some Commonwealth realms and provides special copyright rules for the Crown, i.e. government departments and (generally) state entities.Judge, E. F. (201 ...
and conducts research into machine translation and on-line dictionaries and glossaries. The JTLS is co-located with GCHQ for administrative purposes.
International relationships
GCHQ operates in partnership with equivalent agencies worldwide in a number of bi-lateral and multi-lateral relationships. The principal of these is with the United States (
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and proces ...
), Canada (
Communications Security Establishment
The Communications Security Establishment (CSE; , ''CST''), formerly (from 2008-2014) called the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), is the Government of Canada's national cryptologic agency. It is responsible for foreign signal ...
), Australia (
Australian Signals Directorate
The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), formerly the Defence Signals Directorate, is a statutory agency of the Government of Australia responsible for signals intelligence, providing intelligence support to Australian military operations, con ...
) and New Zealand (
Government Communications Security Bureau
The Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) () is the public service, public-service department of New Zealand charged with promoting New Zealand's national security by collecting and analysing information of an intelligence nature. Th ...
), through the mechanism of the
UK-US Security Agreement, a broad intelligence-sharing agreement encompassing a range of intelligence collection methods. Relationships are alleged to include shared collection methods, such as the system described in the popular media as
ECHELON
Echelon may refer to:
* A level formation
** A level or rank in an organization, profession, or society
** A military sub-subunit smaller than a company but larger than a platoon
** Echelon formation, a step-like arrangement of units
* ECHELO ...
, as well as analysed product.
Legal basis
GCHQ's legal basis is established by the
Intelligence Services Act 1994 Section 3 as follows:
Activities that involve interception of communications are permitted under the
Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000
The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (citation of United Kingdom legislation, c. 23) (RIP or RIPA) is an Act of parliament, Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, regulating the powers of public bodies to carry out surveillanc ...
; this kind of interception can only be carried out after a warrant has been issued by a
Secretary of State. The
Human Rights Act 1998
The Human Rights Act 1998 (c. 42) is an Act of Parliament (United Kingdom), Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom which received royal assent on 9 November 1998, and came into force on 2 October 2000. Its aim was to incorporate into UK law the ...
requires the intelligence agencies, including GCHQ, to respect citizens' rights as described in the
European Convention on Human Rights
The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR; formally the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms) is a Supranational law, supranational convention to protect human rights and political freedoms in Europe. Draf ...
.
Oversight
The
Prime Minister
A prime minister or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. A prime minister is not the head of state, but r ...
nominates cross-party
Members of Parliament to an
Intelligence and Security Committee
The Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament (ISC) is a statutory joint committee of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, appointed to oversee the work of the UK intelligence community.
The committee was established in 1994 by the ...
. The remit of the Committee includes oversight of intelligence and security activities and reports are made directly to Parliament.
Its functions were increased under the
Justice and Security Act 2013
The Justice and Security Act 2013 (c. 18) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, firstly to provide for oversight of the Security Service (MI5), the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), the Government Communications Headquarters (GCH ...
to provide for further access and investigatory powers.
Judicial oversight of GCHQ's conduct is exercised by the
Investigatory Powers Tribunal. The UK also has an independent
Intelligence Services Commissioner The Intelligence Services Commissioner, was a regulatory official in the United Kingdom appointed under Section 59 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. They are tasked with reviewing actions and warrants taken by the Secretary of Sta ...
and Interception of Communications Commissioner, both of whom are former senior judges.
The Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruled in December 2014 that GCHQ does not breach the
European Convention on Human Rights
The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR; formally the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms) is a Supranational law, supranational convention to protect human rights and political freedoms in Europe. Draf ...
, and that its activities are compliant with Articles 8 (right to privacy) and 10 (freedom of expression) of the European Convention on Human Rights.
However, the Tribunal stated in February 2015 that one particular aspect, the data-sharing arrangement that allowed UK Intelligence services to request data from the US surveillance programmes
Prism
PRISM is a code name for a program under which the United States National Security Agency (NSA) collects internet communications from various U.S. internet companies. The program is also known by the SIGAD . PRISM collects stored internet ...
and
Upstream, had been in contravention of human rights law prior to this until two paragraphs of additional information, providing details about the procedures and safeguards, were disclosed to the public in December 2014.
Furthermore, the IPT ruled that the legislative framework in the United Kingdom does not permit
mass surveillance
Mass surveillance is the intricate surveillance of an entire or a substantial fraction of a population in order to monitor that group of citizens. The surveillance is often carried out by Local government, local and federal governments or intell ...
and that while GCHQ collects and analyses data in bulk, it does not practice mass surveillance.
This complements independent reports by the Interception of Communications Commissioner, and a special report made by the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament; although several shortcomings and potential improvements to both oversight and the legislative framework were highlighted.
Abuses
Despite the inherent secrecy around much of GCHQ's work, investigations carried out by the UK government after the Snowden disclosures have admitted various abuses by the security services. A report by the
Intelligence and Security Committee
The Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament (ISC) is a statutory joint committee of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, appointed to oversee the work of the UK intelligence community.
The committee was established in 1994 by the ...
(ISC) in 2015 revealed that a small number of staff at UK intelligence agencies had been found to misuse their surveillance powers, in one case leading to the dismissal of a member of staff at GCHQ, although there were no laws in place at the time to make these abuses a criminal offence.
Later that year, a ruling by the
Investigatory Powers Tribunal found that GCHQ acted unlawfully in conducting surveillance on two human rights organisations. The closed hearing found the government in breach of its internal surveillance policies in accessing and retaining the communications of the
Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights and the
Legal Resources Centre in South Africa. This was only the second time in the IPT's history that it had made a positive determination in favour of applicants after a closed session.
At another IPT case in 2015, GCHQ conceded that "from January 2010, the regime for the interception/obtaining, analysis, use, disclosure and destruction of legally privileged material has not been in accordance with the law for the purposes of Article 8(2) of the European convention on human rights and was accordingly unlawful". This admission was made in connection with a case brought against them by
Abdelhakim Belhaj
Abdelhakim Belhaj (or Belhadj; , nom de guerre: Abu Abdallah Assadaq) (born 1 May 1966) is a Libyan politician and military leader. He is the leader of the Islamist al-Watan Party and former head of the Tripoli Military Council. He was the emi ...
, a Libyan opponent of the former Gaddafi regime, and his wife Fatima Bouchard. The couple accused British ministers and officials of participating in their unlawful abduction, kidnapping and removal to Libya in March 2004, while Gaddafi was still in power.
On 25 May 2021, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that the GCHQ is guilty of violating data privacy rules through their bulk interception of communications, and does not provide sufficient protections for confidential journalistic material because it gathers communications in bulk.
Surveillance of parliamentarians
In 2015 there was a complaint by
Green Party
A green party is a formally organized political party based on the principles of green politics, such as environmentalism and social justice.
Green party platforms typically embrace Social democracy, social democratic economic policies and fo ...
MP
Caroline Lucas
Caroline Patricia Lucas (born 9 December 1960) is a British politician who was the leader of the Green Party of England and Wales from 2003 to 2006, 2007 to 2012, and 2016 to 2018. She was Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), Member of Parli ...
that British intelligence services, including GCHQ, had been spying on MPs allegedly "in defiance of laws prohibiting it."
Then-
Home Secretary
The secretary of state for the Home Department, more commonly known as the home secretary, is a senior minister of the Crown in the Government of the United Kingdom and the head of the Home Office. The position is a Great Office of State, maki ...
,
Theresa May
Theresa Mary May, Baroness May of Maidenhead (; ; born 1 October 1956), is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2016 to 2019. She previously served as Home Secretar ...
, had told Parliament in 2014 that:
The
Investigatory Powers Tribunal investigated the complaint, and ruled that contrary to the allegation, there was no law that gave the communications of Parliament any special protection.
The Wilson Doctrine merely acts as a
political convention
The terms party conference (British English, UK English), political convention (American English, US and Canadian English), and party congress usually refer to a general meeting of a political party. The conference is attended by certain Delega ...
.
Constitutional legal case
A controversial GCHQ case determined the scope of judicial review of prerogative powers (the Crown's residual powers under common law). This was ''
''
985
Year 985 ( CMLXXXV) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place
Europe
* Summer – Henry II (the Wrangler) is restored as duke of Bavaria by Empress Theophanu and her mother-in-law Adelaide at an ...
AC 374 (often known simply as the "GCHQ case"). In this case, a prerogative Order in Council had been used by the prime minister (who is the
Minister for the Civil Service
In the Government of the United Kingdom, the Minister for the Civil Service is responsible for regulations regarding His Majesty's Civil Service, the role of which is to assist the governments of the United Kingdom in formulating and implementi ...
) to ban trade union activities by civil servants working at GCHQ. This order was issued without consultation. The House of Lords had to decide whether this was reviewable by
judicial review
Judicial review is a process under which a government's executive, legislative, or administrative actions are subject to review by the judiciary. In a judicial review, a court may invalidate laws, acts, or governmental actions that are in ...
. It was held that executive action is not immune from judicial review simply because it uses powers derived from common law rather than statute (thus the prerogative is reviewable).
Leadership
The following is a list of the heads and operational heads of GCHQ and GC&CS:
*Sir
Hugh Sinclair
Admiral Sir Hugh Francis Paget Sinclair, (18 August 1873 – 4 November 1939), known as Quex Sinclair, was a British intelligence officer. He was Director of British Naval Intelligence between 1919 and 1921, and he subsequently helped to se ...
(1919–1939) (founder)
*Cmdr
Alastair Denniston
Commander Alexander "Alastair" Guthrie Denniston (1 December 1881 – 1 January 1961) was a Scottish codebreaker, deputy head of the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) and hockey player. Denniston was appointed operational head of GC&CS ...
(1921–February 1942) (operational head)
*Sir
Edward Travis (February 1942 – 1952)
*Sir
Eric Jones (April 1952 – 1960)
*Sir
Clive Loehnis
Sir Clive Loehnis KCMG (24 August 1902 – 23 May 1992) was a director of the British signals intelligence agency, GCHQ, a post he held from 1960 to 1964.
Early life and education
Loehnis was born in 1902 in Chelsea, London, son of barrister Herm ...
(1960–1964)
*Sir
Leonard Hooper Sir Leonard James (Joe) Hooper (23 July 1914 – 19 February 1994) was director of the British signals intelligence agency, GCHQ, a post he held from 1965 to 1973.
Career
Educated at Alleyn's School in South East London and Worcester College, Oxfo ...
(1965–1973)
*Sir
Arthur Bonsall (1973–1978)
*Sir
Brian John Maynard Tovey (1978–1983)
*Sir
Peter Marychurch (1983–1989)
*Sir
John Anthony Adye (1989–1996)
*Sir
David Omand
Sir David Bruce Omand (born 15 April 1947) is a British former senior civil servant who served as the Director of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) from 1996 to 1997.
Background
Omand was born on 15 April 1947. His father, B ...
(1996 –1997)
*Sir
Kevin Tebbit
Sir Kevin Reginald Tebbit (born 18 October 1946)"TEBBIT, Sir Kevin Reginald (1946 - )", ''Debrett's People of Today'', 2004 is a former British civil servant.
Career
He was educated at the Cambridgeshire High School for Boys and was a senior h ...
(1998)
*Sir
Francis Richards (1998–2003)
*Sir
David Pepper (2003–2008)
*Sir
Iain Lobban (2008–2014)
*
Robert Hannigan
Robert Peter Hannigan CMG (born 1965) is a cybersecurity specialist who has been Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, since 2021. He was a senior British civil servant who previously served as the director of the signals intelligence and crypto ...
(2014–2017)
*Sir
Jeremy Fleming (2017–2023)
*
Anne Keast-Butler (2023–Present)
Stations and former stations
The following are stations and former stations that have operated since the
Cold War
The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...
.
Current
United Kingdom
*
GCHQ Bude, Cornwall
*
GCHQ Cheltenham, Gloucestershire (headquarters)
*GCHQ London
*GCHQ Manchester
*
GCHQ Scarborough, North Yorkshire
*
RAF Digby
Royal Air Force Digby otherwise known as RAF Digby is a Royal Air Force List of Royal Air Force stations, station located near Scopwick and south east of Lincoln, Lincolnshire, Lincoln, in Lincolnshire, England. The station is home to the tri-s ...
, Lincolnshire
*
RAF Menwith Hill
Royal Air Force Menwith Hill (RAF Menwith Hill) is a Royal Air Force List of Royal Air Force stations, station near Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England, which provides communications and intelligence support services to the United Kingdom and th ...
, North Yorkshire
Overseas
*
GCHQ Ascension Island
*
GCHQ Cyprus
* GCHQ
Oman
Oman, officially the Sultanate of Oman, is a country located on the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in West Asia and the Middle East. It shares land borders with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Oman’s coastline ...
Former
United Kingdom
*
GCHQ Brora, Sutherland
*
GCHQ Cheadle, Staffordshire
*
GCHQ Culmhead, Somerset
*
GCHQ Hawklaw, Fife
Overseas
Hong Kong
* GCHQ
RAF Little Sai Wan
* GCHQ
Chung Hom Kok
Chung Hom Kok ( or ) is an area in the southern Hong Kong Island in Hong Kong. It is a popular site for barbecue and human swimming, swimming with a beach and lifeguard services available from April to October. West of Stanley, Hong Kong, Stanl ...
(KITTIWAKE)
In popular culture
In the historical drama film ''
The Imitation Game
''The Imitation Game'' is a 2014 American biographical film, biographical thriller film directed by Morten Tyldum and written by Graham Moore (writer), Graham Moore, based on the 1983 biography ''Alan Turing: The Enigma'' by Andrew Hodges. The ...
'' (2014)
Benedict Cumberbatch
Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch (born 19 July 1976) is an English actor. He has received List of awards and nominations received by Benedict Cumberbatch, various accolades, including a BAFTA TV Award, a Primetime Emmy Award and a Laurenc ...
portrays
Alan Turing
Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist. He was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer ...
in his efforts to break the Enigma code while employed by the Government Code and Cypher School.
GCHQ have set a number of cryptic online challenges to the public, used to attract interest and for recruitment, starting in late 1999. The response to the 2004 challenge was described as "excellent", and the challenge set in 2015 had over 600,000 attempts. It also published the ''GCHQ Puzzle Book'' in 2016 which sold more than 300,000 copies, with the proceeds going to charity. A second book was published in October 2018.
GCHQ appeared in the ''
Doctor Who
''Doctor Who'' is a British science fiction television series broadcast by the BBC since 1963. The series, created by Sydney Newman, C. E. Webber and Donald Wilson (writer and producer), Donald Wilson, depicts the adventures of an extraterre ...
'' 2019 special "
Resolution" where the
Reconnaissance Scout Dalek storms the facility and exterminates the staff in order to use the organisation's resources to summon a
Dalek
The Daleks ( ) are a fictional extraterrestrial race of extremely xenophobic mutants principally portrayed in the British science fiction television programme ''Doctor Who''. They were conceived by writer Terry Nation and first appeared in th ...
fleet.
GCHQ is the setting of the 2020
Sky One
Sky One was a British pay television channel operated and owned by Sky Group (a division of Comcast). Originally launched on 26 April 1982 as Satellite Television, it was Europe's first satellite and non- terrestrial channel. From 31 July 1989, ...
sitcom ''
Intelligence
Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. It can be described as t ...
'', featuring
David Schwimmer
David Lawrence Schwimmer (born November 2, 1966) is an American actor, director, and producer. He gained worldwide recognition for portraying Ross Geller in the sitcom '' Friends'', for which he received a Screen Actors Guild Award and a Pri ...
as an incompetent American
NSA
The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and proces ...
officer liaising with GCHQ's Cyber Crimes unit.
In October 2020, intelligence and security expert John Ferris published
''Behind the Enigma: The Authorised History of GCHQ, Britain's Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency''.
GCHQ is the setting of the 2022
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation. It is state-owned enterprise, publicly owned but, unlike the BBC, it receives no public funding and is funded en ...
drama ''
The Undeclared War''. Set in the near future, it depicts a work experience student at the government agency during a cyberattack on the UK and the implications.
See also
GCHQ units:
*
Joint Operations Cell
*
National Cyber Security Centre
GCHQ specifics:
*
Capenhurst
Capenhurst is a village and civil parishes in England, civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire West and Chester and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. It is two miles south west of Ellesmere Port, at the southern end of the Wi ...
– said to be home to a GCHQ monitoring site in the 1990s
*
Hugh Alexander – head of the cryptanalysis division at GCHQ from 1949 to 1971
*
Operation Socialist, a 2010–2013 operation in Belgium
*
Zircon
Zircon () is a mineral belonging to the group of nesosilicates and is a source of the metal zirconium. Its chemical name is zirconium(IV) silicate, and its corresponding chemical formula is Zr SiO4. An empirical formula showing some of th ...
, the cancelled 1980s GCHQ satellite project
UK agencies:
*
British intelligence agencies
The Government of the United Kingdom maintains several intelligence agencies that deal with secret intelligence. These agencies are responsible for collecting, analysing and exploiting foreign and domestic intelligence, providing military intell ...
*
Joint Forces Intelligence Group
*
RAF Intelligence
Intelligence services in the Royal Air Force are delivered by Officers of the Royal Air Force Intelligence Branch and Airmen from the Intelligence Analyst Trade and Intelligence Analyst (Voice) Trade. The specialisation has around 1,200 person ...
*
UK cyber security community
Elsewhere:
*
Signals intelligence by alliances, nations and industries
*
NSA
The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and proces ...
– equivalent United States organisation
Notes and references
Bibliography
*
*
*
*
*
External links
*
His Majesty's Government Communications CentreGovCertUKGCHQ: Britain's Most Secret Intelligence AgencyBBC: A final look at GCHQ's top secret Oakley site in CheltenhamThe Secret History of GCHQBBC documentary
{{Portal bar, United Kingdom
1946 establishments in the United Kingdom
British intelligence agencies
Computer security organizations
Cryptography organizations
Foreign relations of the United Kingdom
Government agencies established in 1946
Organisations based in Cheltenham
Signals intelligence agencies
Organizations associated with Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections
Headquarters in the United Kingdom