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 deleted conspiracies 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 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 by the former American National Security Agency ( NSA ) contractor Edward Snowden
7 July 2005 London bombings
7 July 2005 London bombings
David Pepper (intelligence official)