Sir David Edwin Pepper KCMG (born 8 February 1948) is a British

civil servant The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired on professional merit rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leaders ...

who was the director of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British

signals intelligence Signals intelligence (SIGINT) is intelligence-gathering by interception of ''signals'', whether communications between people (communications intelligence—abbreviated to COMINT) or from electronic signals not directly used in communication ( ...

agency, from 2003 to 2008.

Career

Pepper gained a doctorate in theoretical physics from Oxford University.Aldrich, Richard, ''GCHQ'', Harper Press, 2010, , p.526 He joined GCHQ in 1972, and worked in intelligence operations. In 1995 he became Director of Administration. In 1998, he transferred to the Home Office, returning to GCHQ in Cheltenham in 2000 as Director of Finance, and taking over the role of

Director of GCHQ __NOTOC__ The Director of the Government Communications Headquarters is the highest-ranking official in the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), a British intelligence agency that specialises in signals intelligence, information assurance ...

in April 2003 as successor to Sir Francis Richards. He was succeeded by

Iain Lobban Sir Iain Robert Lobban (born 1960) is a former British civil servant. He was the Director of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British signals intelligence agency, from 2008 to 2014. Education and career Born in Nigeria, Lo ...

in July 2008. Following his retirement from GCHQ, Pepper became a non-executive director of Gloucestershire County Council. Pepper was director of GCHQ at the time of the 7 July 2005 London bombings and told the subsequent committee into the attacks that they were "a demonstration that there were eletedconspiracies going on about which we essentially knew nothing, and that rather sharpens the perception of how big...the unknown unknown was." It was under Pepper's tenure as GCHQ director that the Tempora data collection programme was instigated, with trials beginning at GCHQ Bude in Cornwall in 2008. Tempora extracts and processes data from international fiber optic cable communications. The former Liberal Democrat cabinet minister

Chris Huhne Christopher Murray Paul-Huhne (born 2 July 1954), known as Chris Huhne, is a British energy and climate change consultant and former journalist and politician who was the Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament for Eastleigh from 2005 to 2013 an ...

described Pepper as a "bureaucratic stickler" and said that GCHQ would not have started the Tempora programme without the approval of government ministers. The Tempora programme was revealed in 2013 as part of the

global surveillance disclosures Global means of or referring to a globe and may also refer to: Entertainment * ''Global'' (Paul van Dyk album), 2003 * ''Global'' (Bunji Garlin album), 2007 * ''Global'' (Humanoid album), 1989 * ''Global'' (Todd Rundgren album), 2015 * Bruno ...

by the former American National Security Agency (NSA) contractor

Edward Snowden Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is an American and naturalized Russian former computer intelligence consultant who leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013, when he was an employee and su ...

. Following his retirement from GCHQ Pepper was a member of the advisory board of the French arms company Thales and a strategic adviser to Defence Strategy and Solutions LLP. Pepper contributed a chapter to the January 2010 issue of the Public Policy and Administration journal entitled ''The Business of Sigint: The Role of Modern Management in the Transformation of GCHQ''. An extract from his chapter was published in ''The Guardian'' in December 2009. In the article Pepper outlined how modern corporate management techniques had been used to change the operating culture of GCHQ following the end of the

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

. In the 2011 Mountbatten Memorial Lecture at the Institution of Engineering and Technology, Pepper said that as a result of so much information being accessible through internet search engines the threshold for "producing intelligence" had been "very substantially raised" for the British intelligence agencies. Pepper said that “Nobody wants the easy stuff anymore and there is no point spending effort and money collecting it...Thanks to Google Maps and Streeview anyone can today see photographic detail of far away countries which hitherto would have been available only through secret and highly sophisticated national satellites." Pepper also said that "You can find out a lot about potential spies without ever meeting them, simply by looking at their online footprints." Pepper was awarded the

Order of St Michael and St George The Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George is a British order of chivalry founded on 28 April 1818 by George IV, George IV, Prince of Wales, while he was acting as prince regent for his father, George III, King George III. ...

(KCMG) in 2005.

References

External links

2009 interview with Pepper on the BBC's ''Who's Watching You''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pepper, David 1948 births Living people Alumni of St John's College, Oxford Civil servants in the Home Office Directors of the Government Communications Headquarters Knights Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George