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USA-NSA-GCHQ: DATA SURVEILLANCE: "DISHFIRE" programme retains messages for future use
16 January 2014
See:
NSA collects millions of text messages daily in 'untargeted' global sweep (Guardian, link): NSA extracts location, contacts and financial transactions •
'Dishfire' program sweeps up 'pretty much everything it can' • GCHQ using database to search metadata from UK numbers:
"The documents also reveal the UK spy agency GCHQ has made use of the NSA database to search the metadata of "untargeted and unwarranted" communications belonging to people in the UK. The NSA program, codenamed Dishfire, collects "pretty much everything it can", according to GCHQ documents, rather than merely storing the communications of existing surveillance targets."
"The GCHQ memo sets out in clear terms what the agency's access to Dishfire allows it to do, before handling how UK communications should be treated. .."In contrast to [most] GCHQ equivalents, DISHFIRE contains a large volume of unselected SMS traffic," it states (emphasis original). "This makes it particularly useful for the development of new targets, since it is possible to examine the content of messages sent months or even years before the target was known to be of interest.""[emphasis added] See: DISHFIRE: SMS document (8 pages, pdf)
In a "separate document", not released, concerning GCHQ Channel 4 News added that:
"A separate document reveals the extent to which GCHQ staff used Dishfire to gain information which, under British law, they would need permission to request from telecoms companies within the UK. Under American law, the NSA must delete all US-related texts from the Dishfire database, but does not do the same for UK numberds.
This gives GCHQ a vital store of information, and the documents encourage staff to use it to scope out numbers to see if they might be of interest. "You can... run queries prior to targeting a number, as the content may give you an idea of how useful the number will be," states the document."
"It also offers GCHQ the chance to pull in mobile phone data from years ago - before the person ever became a suspect: "This makes it particularly useful for development of new targets, since it is possible to examine the content of messages sent months or even years before the target was known to be of interest," the document states." [emphasis added]