Spooks scramble to replace failed secret messaging system MI6 and GCHQ have begun work to replace an aborted secret communications system that wasted tens of millions of pounds. The failed project, SCOPE Phase II, was run out of the Cabinet Office with IBM as the main contractor. The intelligence agencies have taken direct control of its replacement, CLiC (Collaboration in the …
Besides, I thought the preferred way for UK intelligence people to share information was to use something called a 'dead drunk drop', whereby an officer gets smashed in a tapas bar and either leaves behind his briefcase for the enjoyment of his fellow diners, or his laptop on the train home afterwards?
I promise to even integrate GCHQ crypto into OpenSSL and GPG. Yearly maintenance charges apply, of course.
And if they want to talk to me on the phone I will bill 500 Pounds/hour for each started hour, ofcourze.
My company is named IGE - International Government Exploiters Corp.
Finally, the dawning of the realisation that New Labour sold out a special relationship to a foreign power? And that was probably aided and abetted with some dirty little personal secrets on file ... for sublime leverage.
Or if you prefer, a foreign power ceding/losing control to a crazy Executive and trying to build an Empire with Con Quests and Conquests.
KISS
Most governments today use things called 'Number Stations', which basically is a radio station that transmits long streams of number read out by a robot voice on shortwave. The Spy then uses an el-cheapo world service radio to pick these transmissions up and are then decoded via a one time pad.
This procedure has been in use for nearly over 100 years now for the following reasons:
1. There's no traceable 'end point', in any internet transaction you will always need to know the address of where you are sending it. With radio, there is no feasible way of tracking someone who is only listening (not transmitting)
2. You don't need an expensive/hard to get/fragile bit of computer hardware to receive messages, you just need an old skool radio which you can get (or build) in pretty much any location in the world. Plus it's a lot easier in terms plausible deniability, try explaining away that swish sat phone to the Taliban when they catch you!
The UK stopped it's Number Station transmissions (Google "The lincolnshire poacher") a fair while ago and most enthusiasts assumed they had moved to a different technology, which this seem to bear out.
Mines the one with the Degen 1103 and edible one-time pad.
The Internet is not a Tool for Hiding Information and Intelligence, it is a Simple Easy Accessed Platform for Presenting Future Knowledge/Raising Stakes with Remote Power Controllers in Charge of your Development/Intellectual Evolution.
* There is no such thing, of course, and thus is any offer of such a thing, a blatant fraud being perpetrated.
There was a hoax 'Number station' on craiglist a while ago:
http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2006/05/31/the-212-796-0735-mystery/
But as I said, putting Number stations on the internet removes it's biggest plus, the fact that noone can tell who you are sending it to. There's no IP logs in a shortwave transmitter, but there is on a webserver.
Just because IBM UK is US owned does not mean that the US has any access whatsoever to details of what projects it undertakes. Most people who work for IBM UK are British and any of them working on secure projects have the necessary clearance to work on them. It really annoys me when you get silly comments like that.
Actually, thanks to little slippets in our "antiterrorism accounting" measures, information on projects, including government projects in other lands, can be audited by US agencies in the attempt to "intercept and control sensitive information that might be useful to terrorists through US companies and corporations."
Don't think its happening now? When NSA plugs a snoop-box into IBM's global network to sniff out packets coming and from from No. 10's procurement offices for "project approvals and summaries"(done and done?), don't come crying...
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