Security threats Toolkit
Story: GCHQ denies developing mass surveillance tech
Oooh .. very carefully put !!
Lets just examine what the actually said. Not what it sounded like they said.
"GCHQ is not developing technology to enable the monitoring of all internet use and phone calls in Britain, or to target everyone in the UK,"
The vital word here is "developing". If they have already developed, but only partially rolled out this technology, then above is still entirely factually correct.
"Similarly, GCHQ has no ambitions, expectations or plans for a database or databases to store centrally all communications data in Britain."
The vital word in this one is "centrally". As the current policy is to strong arm the ISPs into building chunks of the whole and keeping them on their own sites, while providing access to the authorities, the above is again, still entirely true.
Politicians only perfect their double speak over time, quite often not really getting good at it until near the ends of their terms of office. The senior civil servants here represented have been masters of "The creative use of English" for centuries.
"Yes Minister" is only funny because is so very true.
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