Spies sacked for inappropriate surveillance

A handful of GCHQ spies have been dismissed and disciplined for ‘inappropriately accessing personal information’.

This is according to the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) report on privacy, which stemmed from Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013. It revealed for the first time the existence of bulk personal datasets about a wide range of people that aren’t subject to legislation.

The heavily redacted report reads: “Deliberate abuse of access to GCHQ’s systems would constitute gross misconduct (depending on the circumstances) – to date there has only been one case where GCHQ have dismissed a member of staff for misusing access to GCHQ’s systems.

“Each agency reported that they had disciplined – or in some cases dismissed – staff for inappropriately accessing personal information held in these datasets in recent years.”

Intelligence and Security Committee spokeswoman MP Hazel Blears, says: “We also recommend in our report that these matters should be a criminal offence because we regard this as extremely serious indeed.

“If you're trying to get public confidence around privacy then if someone breaches the rules then there ought to be severe sanctions for that kind of breach.”

However, it has not been confirmed what type of information was accessed. Blears says: “We're not in a position today to give you the detailed information ... but I think the fact the committee recommends it be a criminal offence gives an indication of how seriously we take it.”

Image courtesy of Flickr user Defence Images