Middle East discovery fears 'led to hard drive request'
Fears that a British listening post in the Middle East would be discovered was one of the reasons a top civil servant asked the Guardian to destroy hard drives containing the Edward Snowden files, the Independent reports.
The facility allegedly collects emails, phone calls and web traffic on behalf of western intelligence agencies by tapping into underwater fibre optic cables connecting the region to the internet.
The newspaper said it learned of the facility from the leaks of US fugitive Snowden but did not report the location of the site.
Information collected at the installation is part of a wider GCHQ surveillance and monitoring system, code-named Temora, a £1 billion scheme to monitor communications around the world.
Intelligence from the facility is sent to GCHQ's headquarters in Cheltenham and shared with the National Security Agency in the US.