Somebody tipped me off to the innocent sounding “Interception Modernisation Programme”, but what is this exactly? It’s mentioned in this “Security and Counter-Terrorism Science and Innovation Strategy” document (PDF) from the Home Office, which seems to be some sort of happy face p.r.-minded strategy overview to show how on the ball the government is in combatting terrorism through innovation and science . In this context, the “Interception Modernisation Programme” is only mentioned in an aside and it sounds like it could be anything:
Intercepting terrorist communications
Knowing the content of terrorist communications is vital to the UK’s ability to respond to terrorism. The cutting-edge interception technology required is therefore critical to building up our intelligence and to understanding the nature of the threat.
The Interception Modernisation Programme is a cross-Government programme which aims to maintain the UK’s world-class capability in obtaining and exploiting terrorist communications data. It is a key example of how Government is using innovative and ground-breaking technology to stay well ahead of the terrorists.
Knowing the UK government, this may very well be some wild scheme comparable to Echelon, to have an uptodate capability in place to intercept the internet/mobile phone traffic of anyone in the UK at a moment’s notice, or worse, to go trolling for terrorist plots by searching all internet/mobile phone data for certain keywords, a technique many governments seem enamoured of. A Google search didn’t show more than just the above document plus several job descriptions on recruitment websites that mention the programme. Seems they’re still looking for a commercial analyst and a procurement project manager…
Does anybody know anything more?