Their operation will be reorganised under the investigatory powers bill although the IOCCO is pressing for stronger oversight of bulk communications data collection. Others worried about whether bulk communications data they had disclosed had been shared with agencies in other jurisdictions. The intelligence agencies tell us that they need this data to conduct targeted searches, however, in 2015 GCHQ and MI5 searched bulk communications data databases for 263,830 communication addresses or identifiers. In the same year, MI5 “made 20,042 applications to access communications data obtained pursuant to section 94 directions. There are 15 secret “directions” in force under the Telecommunications Act enabling the intelligence services to collect bulk data about online and phone traffic, a surveillance watchdog has revealed.

Source: The Guardian July 07, 2016 12:22 UTC