GCHQ
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 GCHQ    | |
|---|---|
 | |
 | |
| Formation | 1919 |
| Parent organization | UK |
| Headquarters | Benhall, Cheltenham |
| Leader | Iain Lobban |
| Type |  intelligence agency |
| Interest of | Richard M. Bennett, Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament, UK/Home Office/Investigatory Powers Tribunal |
| Exposed by | John Ashley Berry, Duncan Campbell |
| The UK equivalent of the NSA, which carries out mass surveillance on a lot of the world's internet traffic | |
Contents
Origins
GCHQ was originally established after World War 1 as the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) and was known under that name until 1946. During World War 2 it was located at Bletchley Park.
Information Sharing
GCHQ routinely shares information with other signatories of the UKUSA agreement, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and USA. This agreement assists all member countries in circumventing laws about spying on their own citizens.
Tapping Submarine Cables
In 2014, revelations from Edward Snowden revealed how GCHQ acquired taps on internet lines. Whenever GCHQ wanted to tap a new fiber optic cable, they called engineers from BT (codename:REMEDY) to plan where to physically connect to the taps to the cable, and agree how much BT should be paid. GCHQ has Internet data feeds from "more than 18 submarine cables coming into different parts of Britain either direct to GCHQ in Cheltenham or to its remote processing station at Bude in Cornwall"[1].
Mass Surveillance
- Full article: Mass Surveillance
- Full article: Mass Surveillance
In 2014, the Guardian reported that documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden about project Optic Nerve showed that GCHQ recorded millions of images from Yahoo webchats. To avoid overloading their computers while recording streams of so many users simultaneously, they recorded one image every five minutes from the users' feeds.[2]
Related Quotations
| Page | Quote | Author | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| "Philip Cross" | “My view is that Philip Cross probably is a real person, but that he fronts for a group acting under his name. It is undeniably true, in fact the government has boasted, that both the MOD and GCHQ have “cyber-war” ops aiming to defend the “official narrative" against alternative news media, and that is precisely the purpose of the “Philip Cross” operation on Wikipedia. The extreme regularity of output argues against “Philip Cross” being either a one man or volunteer operation. I do not rule out however the possibility he genuinely is just a single extremely obsessed right wing fanatic.” | Craig Murray "Philip Cross" | 21 May 2018 |
| Intelligence agency | “There is something very wrong indeed with the UK security services, which are most certainly not a force for freedom or justice. That MI6 can be headed by as extreme a figure as Dearlove, underlines the threat that the security services pose to any progressive movement in politics.” | Craig Murray | 11 January 2019 |
Employees on Wikispooks
| Employee | Job | Appointed | End | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| John Adye | Director of GCHQ | December 1989 | July 1996 | |
| Arthur Bonsall | Director of GCHQ | December 1973 | December 1978 | |
| Leonard Hooper | Director of GCHQ | December 1965 | December 1973 | |
| Iain Lobban | Director of GCHQ | July 2008 | 24 October 2014 | |
| Peter Marychurch | Director of GCHQ | December 1983 | December 1989 | |
| David Omand | Permanent Secretary of the Home Office | 1 January 1998 | 2002 | |
| David Omand | Director of GCHQ | July 1996 | 31 December 1997 | |
| David Pepper | Director of GCHQ | 2003 | July 2008 | |
| Francis Richards | Director of GCHQ | July 1998 | 2003 | |
| Kevin Tebbit | Director of GCHQ | 1 January 1998 | July 1998 | |
| Brian Tovey | Director of GCHQ | December 1978 | December 1983 | |
| Gareth Williams | Spook | Found dead, naked, and locked in a sports bag in 2010 - allegedly a suicide |
Related Documents
| Title | Type | Publication date | Author(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Document:Dag Hammarskjöld - US, UK and South Africa still withholding crucial information | Article | 10 October 2019 | Ludwig De Braeckeleer | “Communications sent from the CX-52 cryptographic machine used by Dag Hammarskjöld appear to have been intercepted by British and United States signals and intelligence agencies as a result of a secret interception and decryption setting that those agencies held that enabled them to intercept surreptitiously.” |
| Document:GCHQ and Me: My Life Unmasking British Eavesdroppers | Article | 3 August 2015 | Duncan Campbell | No one at the May 2015 conference on intelligence, security and privacy argued against greater openness. Thanks to Edward Snowden and those who courageously came before, the need for public accountability and review has become unassailable. |
| Document:Getting it Right | article | 2011 | Lobster Magazine | A realistic appraisal of the functioning and lack of EFFECTIVE political oversight of the UK Secret Intelligence Services |
| Document:How British journalists are seduced by the Ministry of Defence and spooks | Article | 28 September 2021 | Richard Norton-Taylor | In the world of the spooks, few in the media raised questions about the root causes of terror attacks in Britain even when Eliza Manningham-Buller, then head of MI5, warned that the invasion of Iraq would increase the terrorist threat in Britain. |
| Document:How To Spot A Twitter Troll | Wikispooks Page | 2 July 2019 | Craig Murray | Exposure is the simple way to nullify the vast state propaganda programmes on social media |
| Document:How to spot a Twitter troll | blog post | 2 July 2019 | Craig Murray | Exposure is the simple way to nullify the vast state propaganda programmes on social media |
| Document:Huawei Hypocrisy | blog post | 7 May 2019 | Craig Murray | Former Deputy PM Nick Clegg said GCHQ's ability "to hack anything from handsets to whole networks … needs to be much better understood". |
| Document:Senior spy appointed to lead UK’s joint biosecurity centre | Article | 5 June 2020 | Helen Warrell Sarah Neville | Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at Edinburgh University, says: “The virus is not worried that you’re tracking its progress, it’s not going to change its tactic. Cybersecurity is not your worry with a virus. It’s a biological phenomenon.” |
| Document:The Massive PSYOP Employed against Ukraine by GCHQ and NSA | article | 28 February 2014 | Wayne Madsen | The rapidly developing internet and electroic communications-based PSYOPS capabilities of US-UK intelligence agencies and their targeted use against the government of the Ukraine |
| Document:The Woman who nearly Stopped the War | article | 19 March 2008 | Martin Bright | In January 2003 Katharine Gun, a translator at GCHQ, learned something so outrageous that she sacrificed her career to tell the truth. Martin Bright on a brave deed that should not be forgotten. |
| Document:UK Intelligence And Security Report, 2003 | report | June 2003 | Richard M. Bennett Katie Bennett | A compendious summary of the UK Intelligence And Security agencies, including people, events and places. |
| Document:Whitehall Farce | book review | 12 October 1989 | Paul Foot | James Rusbridger: "Secrecy turns otherwise rational people into fascistic nutters; secrecy allows untold billions of pounds and endless energies to be wasted in unnecessary intelligence; secrecy pollutes the political process, muzzles what is left of the independent press and makes a mockery of Parliament and elections." |
| File:Osp8.pdf | report | November 2005 | The selection criteria and process for deciding on the selection of Intelligence records for declassification and inclusion in the National Archive | |
| File:Security Services Act 1989.pdf | legal document | The Security Services Act 1989 | ||
| File:Ukintell0809.pdf | report | 2008 | UK Intelligence and Security Committee Annual Report 2007-2008 |
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References
External Links
- Wikepedia Main page for UK Government Communications Headquarters
- Home page of the UK GCHQ
- A funny thing happened on the way to the GCHQ doughnut
- FAS Intelligence Resources
- Review of Richard Aldrich's book - GCHQ: The uncensored story of Britain's most secret intelligence agency - 2010 HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-00-727847-3
- Richard Aldrich's web about his book - see above
- Aerial photo © Microsoft Bing Maps
Hat tip Alan Turnbull - Secret Bases UK]]
