Another company mentioned is Cisco. Reverse-engineering the software in its routers allowed GCHQ “not only to access ‘almost any user of the internet’ inside the entire country of Pakistan—but also ‘to re-route selective traffic across international links toward GCHQ’s passive collection systems’,” The Intercept says.
The other key revelation in the latest batch of documents is how GCHQ “cozied up to staff in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, or FCO, to get warrants approved,” which suggests that the organisation is perilously close to subverting UK government departments. When asked about these new claims, GCHQ “refused to comment on the record about any of these matters, instead providing its boilerplate response about how it complies with the law.”
An increasing number of formal challenges to GCHQ’s activities have shown that isn’t true. Indeed, just today the Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruled that GCHQ’s covert surveillance of two international human rights groups was illegal—making the standard claim that GCHQ “complies with the law” increasingly ridiculous.