UK: Controversial GCHQ Unit Engaged in
Domestic Law Enforcement, Online Propaganda, Psychology Research
By Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Fishman
June 23, 2015 "Information
Clearing House"
- "The
Intercept"
-
The spy unit responsible for some of the United
Kingdom’s most controversial tactics of surveillance, online
propaganda and deceit focuses extensively on traditional law
enforcement and domestic activities — even though officials
typically justify its activities by emphasizing foreign
intelligence and counterterrorism operations.
Documents published today by The Intercept demonstrate
how the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG), a unit
of the signals intelligence agency Government Communications
Headquarters (GCHQ), is involved in efforts against political
groups it considers “extremist,” Islamist activity in schools,
the drug trade, online fraud and financial scams.
Though its existence was secret until last
year, JTRIG quickly developed a distinctive profile in the
public understanding, after documents from NSA whistleblower
Edward Snowden
revealed that the unit had engaged in “dirty tricks” like
deploying sexual “honey traps” designed to discredit targets,
launching denial-of-service attacks to shut down Internet chat
rooms, pushing veiled propaganda onto social networks and
generally
warping discourse online.
Early official claims attempted to create the
impression that JTRIG’s activities focused on international
targets in places like Iran, Afghanistan and
Argentina. The closest the group seemed to get to home was
in its targeting of transnational “hacktivist” group Anonymous.
While some of the unit’s activities are
focused on the claimed areas, JTRIG also appears to be
intimately involved in traditional law enforcement areas and
U.K.-specific activity, as previously unpublished documents
demonstrate. An August 2009 JTRIG memo entitled “Operational
Highlights” boasts of “GCHQ’s first serious crime effects
operation” against a website that was identifying police
informants and members of a witness protection program. Another
operation investigated an Internet forum allegedly “used to
facilitate and execute online fraud.” The document also
describes GCHQ advice provided “to assist the UK negotiating
team on climate change.”
Particularly revealing is a fascinating
42-page document from 2011 detailing JTRIG’s activities. It
provides the most comprehensive and sweeping insight to date
into the scope of this unit’s extreme methods. Entitled
“Behavioral Science Support for JTRIG’s Effects and Online
HUMINT [Human Intelligence] Operations,” it describes the types
of targets on which the unit focuses, the psychological and
behavioral research it commissions and exploits, and its future
organizational aspirations. It is authored by a psychologist,
Mandeep K. Dhami.
Among other things, the document lays out the
tactics the agency uses to manipulate public opinion, its
scientific and psychological research into how human thinking
and behavior can be influenced, and the broad range of targets
that are traditionally the province of law enforcement rather
than intelligence agencies.
JTRIG’s domestic and law enforcement
operations are made clear. The report states that the
controversial unit “currently collaborates with other agencies”
including the Metropolitan police, Security Service (MI5),
Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), Border Agency, Revenue
and Customs (HMRC), and National Public Order and Intelligence
Unit (NPOIU). The document highlights that key JTRIG objectives
include “providing intelligence for judicial outcomes”;
monitoring “domestic extremist groups such as the English
Defence League by conducting online HUMINT”; “denying, deterring
or dissuading” criminals and “hacktivists”; and “deterring,
disrupting or degrading online consumerism of stolen data or
child porn.”
It touts the fact that the unit “may cover all
areas of the globe.” Specifically, “operations are currently
targeted at” numerous countries and regions including Argentina,
Eastern Europe and the U.K.
JTRIG’s domestic operations fit into a larger
pattern of U.K.-focused and traditional law enforcement
activities within GCHQ.
Many GCHQ documents
describing the “missions” of the “customers” for which it works
make clear that the agency has a wide mandate far beyond
national security, including providing help on intelligence to
the Bank of England, to the Department for Children, Schools and
Families on reporting of “radicalization,” to various
departments on agriculture and whaling activities, to government
financial divisions to enable good investment decisions, to
police agencies to track suspected “boiler room fraud,” and to
law enforcement agencies to improve “civil and family justice.”
Previous reporting on the spy agency
established its focus on what it regards as political
radicalism. Beyond
JTRIG’s targeting of Anonymous, other parts of GCHQ targeted
political activists deemed to be “radical,” even
monitoring the visits of people to the WikiLeaks website.
GCHQ also stated in one internal memo that it studied and hacked
popular software programs to “enable police operations” and gave
two examples of cracking decryption software on behalf of the
National Technical Assistance Centre, one “a high profile police
case” and the other a child abuse investigation.
The JTRIG unit of GCHQ is so notable because
of its extensive use of propaganda methods and other online
tactics of deceit and manipulation. The 2011 report on the
organization’s operations, published today, summarizes just some
of those tactics:
Throughout this report, JTRIG’s heavy reliance
on its use of behavioral science research (such as psychology)
is emphasized as critical to its operations. That includes
detailed discussions of how to foster “obedience” and
“conformity”:
…
…
In response to inquiries, GCHQ refused to
provide on-the-record responses beyond its boilerplate claim
that all its activities are lawful.
———
Documents published with this article:
