Government Agencies that Really Listen To You: SIGINT in the UK
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 21 December 2020
⏱️ 64 minutes
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Summary
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has been conducting and regulating signals intelligence, SIGINT, since before the United States was born. To talk about how they do it across the pond, David Kris sat down with two experts on UK SIGINT and SIGINT regulation: Michael Drury and Tony Comer, both veterans of Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British counterpart to our own National Security Agency. Michael was GCHQ's first full-time legal advisor from 1996 to 2010, when he joined the private sector, and Tony was GCHQ's historian until his retirement earlier this year. They compared and contrasted the U.S. and UK experience with SIGINT, SIGINT regulation, popular support for SIGINT and intelligence in general, and also some cutting-edge issues, including how SIGINT works today, synergies between SIGINT and cyber, GDPR encryption and online harms.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
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| 0:25.6 | no ball and the aftermath. |
| 0:32.6 | There's a balance and you're not brought up in the same way you are as an American kid |
| 0:38.5 | with what 1776 was all about. |
| 0:41.9 | There's the overwhelming influence of the federal government, how you should push against |
| 0:46.0 | that, what probable cause is anti-concarrington if you're a lawyer. |
| 0:49.9 | That doesn't really form part of our psyche. |
| 0:52.7 | And because of that, we're happy to allow the government a good measure of discretion |
| 0:58.1 | in what it does. |
| 1:00.1 | I'm David Chris and this is the LawFair podcast December 21, 2020. |
| 1:06.5 | The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has been conducting and regulating |
| 1:12.2 | signals intelligence, sigint, since before the United States was even born. |
| 1:19.0 | And so I sat down with the brace of experts on UK's sigint and sigint regulation to talk |
| 1:23.9 | about how they do it across the pond. |
| 1:26.8 | Michael Drury and Tony Comer are veterans of government communications headquarters, GCHQ, |
| 1:33.6 | the British counterpart to our own national security agency. |
| 1:38.0 | Michael was GCHQ's first full-time legal advisor from 1996 to 2010 when he joined the private |
| 1:44.3 | sector and Tony was GCHQ's historian until his retirement earlier this year. |
| 1:51.4 | They are, I believe, the most knowledgeable pair of UK sigint experts on the planet. |
... |
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