GCHQ 'signs deal with Amazon' to host top-secret material

The UK's spy agencies will use the cloud to boost the use of AI, analytics and other technologies

The UK's signals intelligence body, GCHQ, has signed a deal with AWS that will see the agency's most classified material stored in a high-security cloud system.

As reported by the Financial Times, the deal is worth up to £1 billion. It will enable GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 - the UK's three spy agencies - to use AWS' cloud to boost the use of AI, data analytics, speech recognition and other technologies for espionage.

British agents will also be able to share information from overseas more easily and carry out faster searches on each other's databases.

Apart from the three agencies, other government departments, such as the Ministry of Defence, will also use the high-security cloud system during joint operations with intelligence agencies, people with knowledge of the deal told the FT.

They added that all the Agencies' data would be held in the UK, and AWS would not have access to information stored in the system.

GCHQ declined to comment on reports about its relationships with tech suppliers. AWS also declined to comment.

Earlier this year, agents at GCHQ said they were embracing AI technology to uncover patterns in global data, to protect the UK from state-backed disinformation campaigns and other cyber threats.

Jeremy Fleming, GCHQ director, said that making use of AI will be "at the heart" of the agency's transformation to keep the UK safe as espionage operations move into a digital age.

On Monday, Fleming told a conference that the number of ransomware attacks had doubled across the UK in 2021, compared with last year.

Lindy Cameron, chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), said in a speech to the Chatham House thinktank earlier this month that ransomware now presents "the most immediate danger" of all cyber threats facing the UK.

Ciaran Martin, former boss of the NCSC, said the AWS deal would allow the intelligence services to "to get information from huge amounts of data in minutes, rather than in weeks and months".

However, the deal is also likely to ignite concerns about privacy and sovereignty, considering the fact that a large amount of the UK's secret data will be hosted by an American tech firm.

"This is yet another worrying public-private partnership, agreed in secret," said Gus Hosein, executive director of Privacy International.

"If this contract goes through, Amazon will be positioned as the go-to cloud provider for the world's intelligence agencies. Amazon has to answer for itself which countries' security services it would be prepared to work for."