British Intelligence?
Not the PEOPLE, the AGENCIES…! 
If most things in life are “two-edged swords” that can “cut both ways,” then surveillance is a light-saber!
John Sawyers, currently the British ambassador to the United Nations, and incoming head of Britain’s international spy agency, MI6, was recently embarrassed by personal details posted by his wife on Facebook. Details included information about their family, vacations, and residence, but Sawyers has stated that no compromising information has been revealed.
Another embarrassment is that John Sawyers will also be in charge of a new British cybersecurity agency based at GCHQ (another intelligence agency) that is “charged with making sure that all the intelligence services are not vulnerable to hacking, identity theft, of phishing,” according to Trenear-Harvey, the editor-in-chief of “The World Intelligence Review.”
Maybe “intelligence” is too strong a word.
(I wonder if they use Windows….)
The CNN article details other leaks that made security personnel scramble to protect the families of past heads of MI6 and MI5.
Sawyer will be Chief of SIS, the British Secret Intelligence Service. “Known as the Chief of SIS or ‘C’ (after the first Chief, Mansfield Smith-Cumming, who signed himself ‘C’), the Chief is the only serving member of the Service who is officially named in public,” according to the agency.
(Does this sound like “M” to you? )
(Note added July 6, 2009: According to the Wikipedia article, Ian Fleming based his character “M” on Smith-Cumming, right down to the green ink that he used to sign documents.)
Foreign service officers “are advised to exercise caution” on social-networking Web sites, said a Foreign Office representative (who declined to be named, in accordance with government policy).
Fascinating!
I recently wrote that the UK, now known as the “Surveillance Society” (1) (for the highest per capita concentration of surveillance cameras in a western industrialized nation) is considering “the mass surveillance and retention of all user communications on social networking sites, including Facebook, MySpace, and Bebo.”
I also wrote:
Vernon Coaker, the U.K. Home Office security minister, said on Monday that the EU Data Retention Directive, which requires Internet service providers to store communications data for 12 months, does not go far enough!
and:
Besides the contemplated storage of all of the social networking communications, the U.K. government is also considering “deep packet inspection,” the interception and inspection of all data packets that flow over a network, as well as a centralized data base for this information. (More good news for vendors of storage systems!)
For those of you who did not know – yes, these things are possible. Even worse, they are practiced.
And now I understand those recent hits on my earlier blog entry about UK surveillance….
As for me, I will continue to reserve the use of the word “intelligence” for that “thing” in my head that allows me to interpret “data” and prevents me, at a personal level, from making the kinds of mistakes that the UK is making at a national level with regard to surveillance.
And those of us in the United States who wonder about the massive proliferation of “traffic cameras” and “security cameras” can derive a “quantum of solace” (1) from knowing that other western countries have made these mistakes before us….
-Bill at Cheshire Cat Photo™
You can view higher-resolution photos (*generally* 7-30 megabytes, compressed) at the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Pro Gallery on Shutterfly™, where you can also order prints and gifts decorated with the photos of your choice from the gallery. Apparel and other gifts decorated with some of our most popular photos can be ordered from the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Store on CafePress®. Both Shutterfly™ and CafePress® ship to most international locations worldwide! If you don’t see what you want or would like to receive an email when new photos are up on the site, send us an email at info@cheshirecatphoto.com.
