UK: eavesdropping is legal, defends US spy links

LONDON - Britain said eavesdropping by its GCHQ security agency was legal and no threat to privacy but would not confirm or deny reports it received data from a clandestine US intelligence program.

British and US newspapers have suggested that the US National Security Agency handed over information on Britons harvested by a secret program called PRISM.

In his first remarks on the subject, Foreign Secretary William Hague said the two countries did share intelligence but that GCHQ's work was governed by a very strong legal framework.

"The idea that in GCHQ people are sitting around working out how to circumvent a UK law with another agency in another country is fanciful," Hague told BBC TV on Sunday.

"It is nonsense".

Promising he would give a statement on the subject to the lower house of Britain's parliament on Monday, Hague said there was no threat to privacy or people's civil liberties.

He was limited in what he could disclose, he said.

"Of course we share a lot of information with the United States," he said, adding that the two countries enjoyed "an exceptional intelligence sharing relationship".

"But if information arrives in the UK from the US it's governed by our laws."

Britain's two-party coalition government is under pressure to reveal more details of how Britain and the United States share intelligence after the reports, based on a leak, suggested such cooperation ran much deeper than was previously known.

"SNOOPERS' CHARTER BY THE BACK DOOR"

Critics said the collaboration amounted to a "snoopers' charter by the back door", accusing the security services of having much greater access to Britons' phone and electronic communications than they are allowed to under British law thanks to the clandestine US program.

But Hague said such fears were misplaced.

"Intelligence gathering in this country, by the UK, is governed by a very strong legal framework so that we get the balance right between the liberties and privacy of people and the security of the country."

Any intelligence gathering was "authorised, necessary, proportionate and targeted," he added, saying he personally authorised GCHQ intercepts "most days of the week".

The fuss coincides with a public debate in Britain about giving the security services more powers to eavesdrop after a British soldier was brutally killed in London last month in an incident the government described as a "terrorist" attack.      

Douglas Alexander, the opposition Labour party's spokesman for foreign affairs, welcomed Hague's promise to address parliament on the subject, but said he needed to be more open.

"I will be asking the Foreign Secretary in the House of Commons tomorrow to clarify the role of his Department in overseeing those legal frameworks," Alexander said in a statement.

"It is vital that the Government now reassures people who are rightly concerned about these reports."

Britain's parliamentary intelligence and security committee has demanded a report from GCHQ on the subject. By coincidence, its members are due in Washington on Monday to conduct talks with lawmakers and officials in the US intelligence community.

Hague said most Britons had nothing to fear.

"If you are a law-abiding citizen of this country ... you'll never be aware of all the things those (intelligence) agencies are doing to stop your identity being stolen or to stop a terrorist blowing you up tomorrow," he said.

"But if you are a would-be terrorist or the centre of a criminal network or a foreign intelligence agency trying to spy on Britain you should be worried because that is what we work on and we are on the whole quite good at it."