Tempora

The U.K. has a huge dog in this fight...They [GCHQ] are worse than the U.S."[6] Claims exist that Tempora was possible only by way of secret agreements with commercial companies, described in Snowden's leaked documents as "intercept partners".

Snowden also alleged that GCHQ staff were urged to disguise the origin of material in their reports for fear that the role of the companies as intercept partners would cause "high-level political fallout".

[1] TEMPORA comprises different components, like the actual access points to fibre-optic cables, a sanitisation program codenamed POKERFACE, the XKEYSCORE system developed by NSA, and a Massive Volume Reduction (MVR) capability.

[8] The US Army has restricted its employees' access to the Guardian website since the beginning of the NSA leaks of PRISM and Tempora "in order to prevent an unauthorized disclosure of classified information.

"[9] German Federal Minister of Justice Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger tweeted that she considered the program an "Alptraum" ("nightmare") and demanded that European Union institutions investigate the matter.

[12] In September 2018, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the UK's mass data interception and retention programmes, including TEMPORA, "was unlawful and incompatible with the conditions necessary for a democratic society".