Cidersomerset
1st November 2013, 15:36
Although we have been nocking the 'Spooks' justifiably as they have gotten
a bit to big for their boots recently they are one of the oldest proffessions
and definitely need monitoring. As the saying goes who moinitors the monitors....
MI5 & 6 are national heroes and in the merky world of espionage all countries
have heroes and villians in this field......Its sometimes forgotton that WW11
was shortened by the encryption coders breaking the German codes on the
supposed 'unbreakable' enigma machine, and US navel code breaker did the
same with the Japanese.
faRfab9Yyk8
https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQNYjnrCbWUrAj73Io8Kw_08_uBQ_WUn87go_H9tTMsQdawQNNtZFc-CQ9u
This was kept secret long after the end of the war.
http://static.bbci.co.uk/frameworks/barlesque/2.51.6/desktop/3.5/img/blq-blocks_grey_alpha.png
1 November 2013 Last updated at 02:17
Roman Empire to the NSA: A world history of government spyingBy Anthony Zurcher
BBC News Magazine
Employees sit at their stations at the NSA's Threat Operations Center.
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/70814000/jpg/_70814389_64b031e4-a927-4915-9ef8-83fb5f06d04e.jpg
The NSA surveillance program is the latest chapter in a long history of government surveillance
Continue reading the main story
US spy leaksHow intelligence is gathered
NSA secrets failure
'Five eyes' club
US revelations
Revelations about the US National Security Agency's spying have provoked global
outrage. But government snooping is nothing new.
Chinese general Sun Tzu wrote in his famous treatise The Art of War: "Enlightened
rulers and good generals who are able to obtain intelligent agents as spies are certain
for great achievements."
Purloined letters, intercepted communications, official eavesdropping - here are some
examples of spying over the ages, by enlightened rulers and not-so-enlightened ones.
Caesar's spies
In Ancient Rome, major political players had their own surveillance networks, which
provided them with information about the schemes of those in power. A 16th Century
engraving of the murder of Julius Caesar. An extensive spy network couldn't save Julius
Caesar Politician and orator Cicero frequently lamented that his letters were being
intercepted.
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/70814000/jpg/_70814144_8e7338a1-14cb-4781-9ee0-d052ecd7001b.jpg
"I cannot find a faithful message-bearer," he wrote to his friend, the scholar
Atticus. "How few are they who are able to carry a rather weighty letter without
lightening it by reading."
Julius Caesar put together an elaborate spy network to keep himself apprised of the
various plots against him. In fact, Caesar may have known about the Senate-led
conspiracy that culminated in his assassination.
Even the best spy network sometimes cannot stop a dagger.
In the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church was more powerful than most
governments - and it had a powerful surveillance network to match.
French Bishop Bernard Gui was a noted author and one of the leading architects of the
Inquisition in the late 13th and early 14th Centuries. For 15 years, he served as head
inquisitor of Toulouse, where he convicted more than 900 individuals of heresy.
A noted author and historian, Gui was best known for the Conduct of the Inquisition into
Heretical Depravity, written in 1323-24, in which he outlined the means for identifying,
interrogating and punishing heretics.
Continue reading the main story
“
Start Quote
Gentlemen don't read each other's mail”
End Quote
Henry Stimson
US Secretary of State
The court of Elizabeth I was fertile ground for scheming and spies, and Francis
Walsingham's job was to keep the monarch one step ahead of her adversaries.
In May 1582, Walsingham intercepted letters written by Spanish ambassador to
England, Bernardino de Mendoza, regarding a conspiracy to invade England and install
Mary, Queen of Scots to the throne.
While Mary was confined to Chartley Manor, Walsingham came up with a way to prove
she was a threat to the queen. He had most of her mail opened, but led her to believe
that she had a secret means of correspondence through letters hidden in a beer keg.
Walsingham gathered evidence of Mary's involvement in rebellious plots. She was put
on trial for treason and beheaded.
Robespierre's watchmen
Mary learned the hard way that what you think the government is reading is not as
essential as what you think the government isn't reading.
Diplomats pose for a photograph around the negotiating table following the ratification
of the Four Power Pacific Treaty US cryptographers intercepted diplomatic
communications at a 1922 conference
During the French Revolution, Maximilien Robespierre and his cohort watched the
population with a careful eye and ruthlessly cracked down on internal dissent.
In 1793, the revolutionary government established 12-member "committees of
surveillance" throughout the country. They were authorised to identify, monitor and
arrest any suspicious former nobles, foreigners, nationals who had recently returned
from abroad, suspended public officials and many more.
Historians estimate that as many as half a million people were targeted by the
surveillance committees, which were particularly ruthless in smaller French towns.
When neighbours have the power to spy, the results can be tragic.
In the 18th and 19th Centuries, governments undertook surveillance with bureaucratic
gusto. Across Europe, they established departments called "black chambers" (from the
French, cabinet noir) to read the letters of targeted individuals.
The bureaux, usually located in post office buildings, employed a variety of techniques
to surreptitiously open, copy and reseal correspondence, then forward the missives on
to the unsuspecting recipients.
The practice embroiled the British government in scandal in 1844 when it was revealed
that the London black chamber was secretly reading the mail of exiled Italian author
and activist Giusseppe Mazzini.
Many in the British public were outraged that their government had passed information
to the Neapolitans, who used it to execute Mazzini's fellow revolutionaries.
In Europe, the industrial revolution was also a revolution in spycraft.
Negotiating with espionage
In 1922, the United States hosted a naval disarmament conference in Washington,
where it oversaw talks among nine nations, including United Kingdom, France, Italy and Japan.
German employees sort through the files of the Stasi intelligence agency The
intelligence agency Stasi kept files on 10 million East Germans
It also spied on the Japanese and other negotiating teams, intercepting and decrypting
communications between delegations and their home countries.
Thanks in part to inside knowledge about negotiation positions provided by the US
Cipher Bureau, the government cryptography office founded A world history of
government spyingin 1919, the US was able to successfully broker several multinational
treaties and agreements that headed off a naval arms race.
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/70814000/jpg/_70814391_958e90a6-871a-4051-88a1-d92b1ed9b31f.jpg
In 1929, the Cypher Bureau was shut down by Secretary of State Henry Stimson, who
said: "Gentlemen don't read each other's mail."
After World War Two, the Americans decided gentlemen need a permanent surveillance network.
Behind the Cold War's Iron Curtain, surveillance of the population was an everyday part
of life. Nowhere was this more prevalent than in East Germany, where for nearly 40
years the Stasi intelligence service monitored and reported on the activities of its
citizens, using the information to stifle unrest.
By the time the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the Stasi had grown to more than 91,000
officers, with an active informer network of close to 200,000.
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/70814000/jpg/_70814146_33bc142b-b167-4e24-a589-a7e9a9ec37e2.jpg
The East German surveillance state used modern technology and massive manpower to
expand government spying on a previously unimaginable scale.
The United States entered the surveillance business in earnest following World War Two,
when it began collecting and monitoring all telegraph information coming into and out of
the country as part of Project Shamrock. It also created a "watch list" of US citizens
suspected of "subversive" activities whose communications it kept tabs on as part of
Project Minaret.
The operation was taken over by the newly formed National Security Agency (NSA),
which co-operated with the FBI and CIA. Both programmes were shut down after an
investigation by the US Congress in 1975.
Thirty-eight years later, the NSA has rebuilt Project Shamrock using the technology of
the information age.
And the rest, as they say, is history...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24749166
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MENWITH HILL: NSA's Spy Center in the UK - 2012 Report ( This is not new) !!
I have touched on this in a previous post....This will also explain why any leaks
about this place will be treated as a violation of National Security ......and
why the US/UK are so interlinked at this level, it goes back to WW11 thru
the cold war to today. A massive defence bureaucracy that needs an enemy
or the fear of one.
http://franceslaing.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/menwith-hill-from-sky.jpg
British Big Bro: UK spy agency & NSA 'siblings', share mined data
YN36sKUCDjk
Published on 22 Jun 2013
With the US grappling with privacy debates over its recently exposed surveillance
tactics President Obama has nominated James Comey to lead the FBI. He is a
former high ranking Justice Department official under President George W. Bush.
RT talks about this surveillance issue with Glenmore Treaner Harvey, editor in chief
of the World Intelligence Review website.
====================================================
MENWITH HILL: NSA's Spy Center in the UK - 2012 Report
RfHRABGWl1w
Published on 10 Jun 2013
From March of 2012:
America's largest eavesdropping centre in Britain, Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire,
is being expanded in a multimillion-pound programme as it becomes increasingly
vital to US intelligence and military operations, according to a study of the
controversial base released on Thursday.
The base, which plays a key role in the global network of the National Security
Agency (NSA), GCHQ's American partner, now includes 33 radomes -- commonly
called "golf balls" after the white sheeting protecting the satellite receiving and
transmission stations -- and is undergoing a big construction programme.
The study describes the programme, called Project Phoenix, as "one of the largest
and most sophisticated high technology programmes carried out anywhere in the
UK over the last 10 years". Work on it has been reserved for US-based arms
corporations including Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, and their
personnel with high-level security clearance, it notes.
Though the base is officially called RAF Menwith Hill, most of the staff there are US
employees of the NSA. The total number of people working there is due to increase
from 1,800 last year (of whom 400 were British) to 2,500 in 2015.
The costs to Britain of servicing Menwith Hill, like other American bases in Britain,
are confidential under cost-sharing arrangements between the UK and the US. The
total cost of the equipment at the base, and running it, is classified.
However, official figures released in the US show that this year the NSA is spending
$68m (£43m) just on a generator plant to provide power for new supercomputers
at the base.Computers at the base are capable of carrying out 2m intercepts an
hour, according to the Federation of American Scientists, an independent US body.
The report on the base was commissioned by the Yorkshire Campaign for Nuclear
Disaarmament (CND) and funded by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. It said
the base was being expanded "to provide qualitatively new capabilities for
intelligence-led warfare".
Menwith Hill will combine its traditional role of eavesdropping on communications
and missile tests to "co-ordinate real-time military operations such as covert
warfare, using a variety of intelligence sources".
Satellite communications and imagery and supercomputers at the base "can
provide real-time surveillance to support US military operations", according to the
new study. It said Menwith Hill would be "fully operational as an upgraded, active
intelligence hub by 2015".
Steve Schofield, the study's author, said: "It is no longer possible to think of
Menwith Hill as simply carrying out traditional military, diplomatic and commercial
electronic spying for the United States, but rather to recognise its role as an active
provider of integrated intelligence to support new forms of warfare."
He added: "This paradigm shift towards permanent surveillance from space and
real-time military interventions anywhere in the world through remotely-controlled
weapons raises profound questions about the western way of war but questions
that are, as yet, barely being addressed."
The RAF describes Menwith Hill's primary mission as providing "intelligence support
for UK, US and allied interests". Satellite communications also provide data for the
US missile defence system, the RAF says.
It would be "inappropriate to go into any detail about operations carried out at RAF
Menwith Hill in support of national security", it says.
"Public and parliamentary scrutiny of RAF Menwith Hill is provided through clear
lines of ministerial responsibility and by the intelligence and security committee
(ISC)."
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/images/2008/06/400603.jpg
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/images/2008/09/408483.jpg
2aI-aqJ01Nk
http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?60355-MENWITH-HILL-NSA-s-Spy-Center-in-the-UK-2012-Report---This-is-not-new----
a bit to big for their boots recently they are one of the oldest proffessions
and definitely need monitoring. As the saying goes who moinitors the monitors....
MI5 & 6 are national heroes and in the merky world of espionage all countries
have heroes and villians in this field......Its sometimes forgotton that WW11
was shortened by the encryption coders breaking the German codes on the
supposed 'unbreakable' enigma machine, and US navel code breaker did the
same with the Japanese.
faRfab9Yyk8
https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQNYjnrCbWUrAj73Io8Kw_08_uBQ_WUn87go_H9tTMsQdawQNNtZFc-CQ9u
This was kept secret long after the end of the war.
http://static.bbci.co.uk/frameworks/barlesque/2.51.6/desktop/3.5/img/blq-blocks_grey_alpha.png
1 November 2013 Last updated at 02:17
Roman Empire to the NSA: A world history of government spyingBy Anthony Zurcher
BBC News Magazine
Employees sit at their stations at the NSA's Threat Operations Center.
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/70814000/jpg/_70814389_64b031e4-a927-4915-9ef8-83fb5f06d04e.jpg
The NSA surveillance program is the latest chapter in a long history of government surveillance
Continue reading the main story
US spy leaksHow intelligence is gathered
NSA secrets failure
'Five eyes' club
US revelations
Revelations about the US National Security Agency's spying have provoked global
outrage. But government snooping is nothing new.
Chinese general Sun Tzu wrote in his famous treatise The Art of War: "Enlightened
rulers and good generals who are able to obtain intelligent agents as spies are certain
for great achievements."
Purloined letters, intercepted communications, official eavesdropping - here are some
examples of spying over the ages, by enlightened rulers and not-so-enlightened ones.
Caesar's spies
In Ancient Rome, major political players had their own surveillance networks, which
provided them with information about the schemes of those in power. A 16th Century
engraving of the murder of Julius Caesar. An extensive spy network couldn't save Julius
Caesar Politician and orator Cicero frequently lamented that his letters were being
intercepted.
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/70814000/jpg/_70814144_8e7338a1-14cb-4781-9ee0-d052ecd7001b.jpg
"I cannot find a faithful message-bearer," he wrote to his friend, the scholar
Atticus. "How few are they who are able to carry a rather weighty letter without
lightening it by reading."
Julius Caesar put together an elaborate spy network to keep himself apprised of the
various plots against him. In fact, Caesar may have known about the Senate-led
conspiracy that culminated in his assassination.
Even the best spy network sometimes cannot stop a dagger.
In the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church was more powerful than most
governments - and it had a powerful surveillance network to match.
French Bishop Bernard Gui was a noted author and one of the leading architects of the
Inquisition in the late 13th and early 14th Centuries. For 15 years, he served as head
inquisitor of Toulouse, where he convicted more than 900 individuals of heresy.
A noted author and historian, Gui was best known for the Conduct of the Inquisition into
Heretical Depravity, written in 1323-24, in which he outlined the means for identifying,
interrogating and punishing heretics.
Continue reading the main story
“
Start Quote
Gentlemen don't read each other's mail”
End Quote
Henry Stimson
US Secretary of State
The court of Elizabeth I was fertile ground for scheming and spies, and Francis
Walsingham's job was to keep the monarch one step ahead of her adversaries.
In May 1582, Walsingham intercepted letters written by Spanish ambassador to
England, Bernardino de Mendoza, regarding a conspiracy to invade England and install
Mary, Queen of Scots to the throne.
While Mary was confined to Chartley Manor, Walsingham came up with a way to prove
she was a threat to the queen. He had most of her mail opened, but led her to believe
that she had a secret means of correspondence through letters hidden in a beer keg.
Walsingham gathered evidence of Mary's involvement in rebellious plots. She was put
on trial for treason and beheaded.
Robespierre's watchmen
Mary learned the hard way that what you think the government is reading is not as
essential as what you think the government isn't reading.
Diplomats pose for a photograph around the negotiating table following the ratification
of the Four Power Pacific Treaty US cryptographers intercepted diplomatic
communications at a 1922 conference
During the French Revolution, Maximilien Robespierre and his cohort watched the
population with a careful eye and ruthlessly cracked down on internal dissent.
In 1793, the revolutionary government established 12-member "committees of
surveillance" throughout the country. They were authorised to identify, monitor and
arrest any suspicious former nobles, foreigners, nationals who had recently returned
from abroad, suspended public officials and many more.
Historians estimate that as many as half a million people were targeted by the
surveillance committees, which were particularly ruthless in smaller French towns.
When neighbours have the power to spy, the results can be tragic.
In the 18th and 19th Centuries, governments undertook surveillance with bureaucratic
gusto. Across Europe, they established departments called "black chambers" (from the
French, cabinet noir) to read the letters of targeted individuals.
The bureaux, usually located in post office buildings, employed a variety of techniques
to surreptitiously open, copy and reseal correspondence, then forward the missives on
to the unsuspecting recipients.
The practice embroiled the British government in scandal in 1844 when it was revealed
that the London black chamber was secretly reading the mail of exiled Italian author
and activist Giusseppe Mazzini.
Many in the British public were outraged that their government had passed information
to the Neapolitans, who used it to execute Mazzini's fellow revolutionaries.
In Europe, the industrial revolution was also a revolution in spycraft.
Negotiating with espionage
In 1922, the United States hosted a naval disarmament conference in Washington,
where it oversaw talks among nine nations, including United Kingdom, France, Italy and Japan.
German employees sort through the files of the Stasi intelligence agency The
intelligence agency Stasi kept files on 10 million East Germans
It also spied on the Japanese and other negotiating teams, intercepting and decrypting
communications between delegations and their home countries.
Thanks in part to inside knowledge about negotiation positions provided by the US
Cipher Bureau, the government cryptography office founded A world history of
government spyingin 1919, the US was able to successfully broker several multinational
treaties and agreements that headed off a naval arms race.
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/70814000/jpg/_70814391_958e90a6-871a-4051-88a1-d92b1ed9b31f.jpg
In 1929, the Cypher Bureau was shut down by Secretary of State Henry Stimson, who
said: "Gentlemen don't read each other's mail."
After World War Two, the Americans decided gentlemen need a permanent surveillance network.
Behind the Cold War's Iron Curtain, surveillance of the population was an everyday part
of life. Nowhere was this more prevalent than in East Germany, where for nearly 40
years the Stasi intelligence service monitored and reported on the activities of its
citizens, using the information to stifle unrest.
By the time the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the Stasi had grown to more than 91,000
officers, with an active informer network of close to 200,000.
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/70814000/jpg/_70814146_33bc142b-b167-4e24-a589-a7e9a9ec37e2.jpg
The East German surveillance state used modern technology and massive manpower to
expand government spying on a previously unimaginable scale.
The United States entered the surveillance business in earnest following World War Two,
when it began collecting and monitoring all telegraph information coming into and out of
the country as part of Project Shamrock. It also created a "watch list" of US citizens
suspected of "subversive" activities whose communications it kept tabs on as part of
Project Minaret.
The operation was taken over by the newly formed National Security Agency (NSA),
which co-operated with the FBI and CIA. Both programmes were shut down after an
investigation by the US Congress in 1975.
Thirty-eight years later, the NSA has rebuilt Project Shamrock using the technology of
the information age.
And the rest, as they say, is history...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24749166
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MENWITH HILL: NSA's Spy Center in the UK - 2012 Report ( This is not new) !!
I have touched on this in a previous post....This will also explain why any leaks
about this place will be treated as a violation of National Security ......and
why the US/UK are so interlinked at this level, it goes back to WW11 thru
the cold war to today. A massive defence bureaucracy that needs an enemy
or the fear of one.
http://franceslaing.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/menwith-hill-from-sky.jpg
British Big Bro: UK spy agency & NSA 'siblings', share mined data
YN36sKUCDjk
Published on 22 Jun 2013
With the US grappling with privacy debates over its recently exposed surveillance
tactics President Obama has nominated James Comey to lead the FBI. He is a
former high ranking Justice Department official under President George W. Bush.
RT talks about this surveillance issue with Glenmore Treaner Harvey, editor in chief
of the World Intelligence Review website.
====================================================
MENWITH HILL: NSA's Spy Center in the UK - 2012 Report
RfHRABGWl1w
Published on 10 Jun 2013
From March of 2012:
America's largest eavesdropping centre in Britain, Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire,
is being expanded in a multimillion-pound programme as it becomes increasingly
vital to US intelligence and military operations, according to a study of the
controversial base released on Thursday.
The base, which plays a key role in the global network of the National Security
Agency (NSA), GCHQ's American partner, now includes 33 radomes -- commonly
called "golf balls" after the white sheeting protecting the satellite receiving and
transmission stations -- and is undergoing a big construction programme.
The study describes the programme, called Project Phoenix, as "one of the largest
and most sophisticated high technology programmes carried out anywhere in the
UK over the last 10 years". Work on it has been reserved for US-based arms
corporations including Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, and their
personnel with high-level security clearance, it notes.
Though the base is officially called RAF Menwith Hill, most of the staff there are US
employees of the NSA. The total number of people working there is due to increase
from 1,800 last year (of whom 400 were British) to 2,500 in 2015.
The costs to Britain of servicing Menwith Hill, like other American bases in Britain,
are confidential under cost-sharing arrangements between the UK and the US. The
total cost of the equipment at the base, and running it, is classified.
However, official figures released in the US show that this year the NSA is spending
$68m (£43m) just on a generator plant to provide power for new supercomputers
at the base.Computers at the base are capable of carrying out 2m intercepts an
hour, according to the Federation of American Scientists, an independent US body.
The report on the base was commissioned by the Yorkshire Campaign for Nuclear
Disaarmament (CND) and funded by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. It said
the base was being expanded "to provide qualitatively new capabilities for
intelligence-led warfare".
Menwith Hill will combine its traditional role of eavesdropping on communications
and missile tests to "co-ordinate real-time military operations such as covert
warfare, using a variety of intelligence sources".
Satellite communications and imagery and supercomputers at the base "can
provide real-time surveillance to support US military operations", according to the
new study. It said Menwith Hill would be "fully operational as an upgraded, active
intelligence hub by 2015".
Steve Schofield, the study's author, said: "It is no longer possible to think of
Menwith Hill as simply carrying out traditional military, diplomatic and commercial
electronic spying for the United States, but rather to recognise its role as an active
provider of integrated intelligence to support new forms of warfare."
He added: "This paradigm shift towards permanent surveillance from space and
real-time military interventions anywhere in the world through remotely-controlled
weapons raises profound questions about the western way of war but questions
that are, as yet, barely being addressed."
The RAF describes Menwith Hill's primary mission as providing "intelligence support
for UK, US and allied interests". Satellite communications also provide data for the
US missile defence system, the RAF says.
It would be "inappropriate to go into any detail about operations carried out at RAF
Menwith Hill in support of national security", it says.
"Public and parliamentary scrutiny of RAF Menwith Hill is provided through clear
lines of ministerial responsibility and by the intelligence and security committee
(ISC)."
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/images/2008/06/400603.jpg
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/images/2008/09/408483.jpg
2aI-aqJ01Nk
http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?60355-MENWITH-HILL-NSA-s-Spy-Center-in-the-UK-2012-Report---This-is-not-new----