Fwd: INSIDE GCHQ - GCHQ Scarborough fixes its eyes on Moscow

FYI...??


Sunday February 11 2018

INSIDE GCHQ
-----------
GCHQ Scarborough fixes its eyes on Moscow
-----------------------------------------

A resurgent Russia is driving GCHQ to recruit more spies, David Collins 
discovers on an exclusive tour of its secret Scarborough outpost

David Collins, Northern Correspondent

On a windy hill in Scarborough, next to a slightly ramshackle sheep 
farm, one of Britain’s most secret buildings sits behind a barbed-wire 
fence. It is a GCHQ base dating from the First World War, when our spies 
intercepted messages to and from the German fleet. More recently it 
spearheaded an investigation into Manchester bomber Salman Abedi’s 
terror network.

The Sunday Times has been given exclusive access to the base as GCHQ 
today announces a significant expansion of its northern spy hub. It is 
recruiting 100 extra personnel to counter the threat from domestic 
terror and Russia.

A web of tall, thin antennae can be seen rising out of the surrounding 
fields as we drive to the base along a narrow road. We are greeted at
the entrance by a group of senior intelligence officers and have to
give up mobiles, tablets and laptops.

Simon, the head of GCHQ Scarborough, takes us inside the bunker and into 
the event management centre, where intelligence officers dealt with the 
aftermath of the Manchester bomb. We are the first news organisation to 
visit.

There are rows of computers and spotless white desks; no documents are 
left on show. In a room with walls of opaque glass is a live feed to 
GCHQ headquarters in Cheltenham. Staff dressed in casual shirts and 
jeans buzz around, looking more like Q than James Bond. Binary code 
decorates the walls.

“The Manchester bomb was a terrible night,” says Simon, who is from 
Wales, speaks five languages, including Russian and Serbo-Croatian,
and joined the spy agency in 1987 as the Cold War neared its end.
Many of the officers we meet speak with surprising emotion of
the night of the attack.

“I can’t imagine what it must have felt like for those parents with 
children inside [ the Manchester Arena ] — the panic,” he adds. “I had 
tickets to watch 'Kiss' in concert [ there ] about a week later; it
was an attack that felt very close to home. There was shock, then the 
training kicked in.

“We had a counterterror team working here through the night. There was 
an inevitable feeling of failure. A good day for us is when nothing 
happens. But then that’s the problem. It’s like the old saying : ‘We
have to get lucky all the time; they only have to get lucky once’.

“We can scan the horizon and prioritise but we can’t see everything.”

Simon is about 5ft 7in, with dark, slicked-back hair, and keen to 
emphasise that GCHQ wants a diverse range of staff. He says things have 
changed since the 1980s, when white, male Oxbridge types dominated the 
intelligence agencies.

GCHQ deals with intelligence from electronic communications and signals, 
which means intercepting messages. It also protects us from 
cyber-attacks. The Nazis’ Enigma code was cracked by Alan Turing, who 
worked at Bletchley Park, a precursor to GCHQ.

Nik Mehta, a deputy director, says Stonewall has just named GCHQ one of 
the top 100 LGBT employers in the UK, and there is clearly a sense of 
pride in that achievement. A member of staff shows us a blog written by 
Emma G, who came out as transgender in 2014. Emma is the operations 
chief analyst for the National Cyber Security Centre, part of GCHQ. She 
writes : “My chosen name is Emma and pronouns she/her.”

During the tour, Simon opens up a little about GCHQ’s priorities, and 
there is one buzzword in the building : Russia.

“When I joined, it was at the height of the Cold War against the Soviet 
Union,” he recalls. “When it ended, we were actively encouraged to move 
away from Russia. Things like 9/11 and 7/7 gave us more live, active 
targets to look at. But now things are coming back around and Russia is 
becoming the priority.”

And what about Edward Snowden, the American intelligence official who 
blew the whistle on National Security Agency and GCHQ surveillance 
programmes ? In 2013, it was reported that GCHQ could circumvent the 
legal process to access emails, photographs and videos from internet 
companies based outside the UK. The reports were based on information 
Snowden took from a GCHQ PowerPoint presentation.

“One of the things that happened as a result of that was that encryption 
on the internet came about more quickly. Gmail, Hotmail... everything is 
encrypted now,” says Simon.

“I think with Snowden, the danger is that when you see a PowerPoint 
briefing or document and don’t understand fully how it is used then you 
get a message across which is distorted.”

One effect of Snowden was that the public became concerned private 
communications were being tapped unnecessarily. “If you are not 
committing a serious crime or undermining the country then we are really 
not interested in you,” Simon insists. “There are so many people who 
want to cause us harm as it is that we have to prioritise.”

We enter a room where trainees form teams to hack each other’s computer 
networks. Referring to the recruitment drive, Simon says with a smile : 
“We want more northerners — they are the smartest.”

So northerners make the best spies ? “We don’t like being called spies,” 
cuts in a senior staffer, a young woman with short, spiky hair who looks 
like someone straight from the cast of the television drama 'Spooks'.
“We prefer ‘intelligence officers’.”

“Yes, we’re not much like Bond,” adds another. “More like geeks.”

Does anybody watch 'Spooks' ? There is a murmur of laughter. “There’s
a joke in the intelligence community,” says the young woman. “MI6 get 
Bond; all we get is Ruth from 'Spooks'. There’s a drinking game people 
play : put on an episode and each time GCHQ is mentioned, you have to 
drink.”

Steve, a senior staffer who knows Boris Johnson and Theresa May, and 
helped organise security at the 2012 London Olympics, shakes his head. 
“My wife doesn’t let me watch it with her. 'Spooks', [ the reality TV 
series ] 'Hunted'... they’re all the same. They make the breakthroughs 
look so easy. I’ll tut all the way through until she turns it off.”

Staff at Scarborough appear relatively open with their closest family 
members; it is not as strict as MI5 or MI6. However, there is still the 
inevitable security risk of working for an intelligence agency.

Simon, for example, is not on any social media : “There’s too much 
information on Facebook. It’s a great tool for us.” What does he tell 
friends and family about his job ? “Close family know what I do. That 
was pretty much blown a long time ago. But most of my friends think
I’m a boring old civil servant.

“The ones who know sometimes ask me about where they should go on 
holiday. Should I go to Egypt this year ? Is it safe ? That sort of 
thing. I tell them to go check the Foreign Office website.”

At the end of the tour we are shown into a boardroom for tea and 
introduced to another Emma, a 26-year-old from Scarborough who changed 
careers from being a maths teacher. She was on placement at a local 
school when GCHQ staff gave a presentation to sixth-formers.

“They came for the students but convinced the teacher instead,” she says.

The mood becomes serious when the conversation turns back to the 
Manchester attack. Another young spy, George, a 22-year-old English 
literature graduate, was part of the team working the day after the
bomb went off.

“I didn’t hear until the morning, when it was on the news,” he says. 
“It’s hard to put into words, seeing something like that. Coming into 
work that day was almost dreamlike. People were devastated. You are 
constantly thinking : could it have been stopped ? Could we have done 
more ? I guess that’s what keeps us going.”

WATCHING BRIEF : KEY BASES
--------------------------
CHELTENHAM
Beginnings Staff moved into purpose-built building, nicknamed “the 
Doughnut”, in 2004
Claim to fame Largest building for secret intelligence operations 
outside US. GCHQ director said to have no office, merely a desk in an 
open office space
Number of workers 5,500. It is Gloucestershire’s largest single employer.
Recent jobs London Bridge terrorist attack; Manchester bomb

SCARBOROUGH
Beginnings Signals base in area has been operational since 1912. Moved 
to current location in 1943
Claim to fame Believed to be the longest continuously serving site for 
signals intelligence ( intercepting messages ) in the world
Number of workers Just over 200 — soon to expand to more than 300
Recent jobs Manchester bomb; protecting infrastructure from Russian 
cyber-attacks

@davidcollinsST


https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/gchq-scarborough-fixes-its-eyes-on-moscow-g8dmqmljv

--------------

https://www.gchq.gov.uk/gchq-scarborough

https://www.gchq.gov.uk/features/scarboroughs-sigint-centenary-1914-2014

https://www.gchq.gov.uk/features/about-gchq-scarborough

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GCHQ_Scarborough

https://www.thescarboroughnews.co.uk/news/do-you-want-to-know-the-secrets-of-gchq-1-7976725

https://www.thescarboroughnews.co.uk/news/listening-base-stays-silent-on-its-top-secrets-1-6663831

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/opinion/do-you-have-what-it-takes-to-join-gchq-a-yorkshire-expert-reveals-what-you-need-1-8838603