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MI6 hacked into an online al-Qaeda magazine and replaced bomb-making instructions with a cupcake recipe.
It’s a more polite hack than subtly altering the recipe so it blows up during the making process. (I’ve been told, although I don’t know for sure, that the 1971 Anarchist’s Cookbook has similarly flawed recipes.)
Oops:
The United Kingdom’s MI6 agency acknowledged this week that in 2006 it had to scrap a multi-million-dollar undercover drug operation after an agent left a memory stick filled with top-secret data on a transit coach.
The general problem. The general solution.
Refreshing commentary from Nigel Inkster, former Assistant Chief and Director of Operations and Intelligence of MI6:
“Efforts to establish a global repository of counterterrorist information are unlikely ever to succeed. We need to be wary of rebuilding our world to deal with just one problem, one which might not be by any means the most serious we face.”
Asked what dangers were more serious than terrorism, Mr Inkster suggested that British government planners were more concerned regarding the possible results of global pandemics, or perhaps the worst-case outcomes of climate change.
“We need to keep terrorism in some kind of context,” he said. “For example, every year in the UK, more people die in road accidents than have been killed by terrorists in all of recorded history.”
The secret-service mandarin suggested that the Global War On Terror initiated by the Bush administration could never be won.
“We can’t kill or arrest our way out of this problem… we will never solve this issue and live in a terrorism-free world. It has to be managed.”
Inkster said that there was definitely a need for police and sometimes military action in fighting terrorism, but suggested that it was now widely acknowledged in the spook community that the Iraq invasion—and now the Israeli assault on Gaza – were definite factors in radicalisation of British domestic terrorists.
“A move away from the rhetoric of GWOT will help,” he said, saying that the “more nuanced message” of the Obama administration was already showing results.
As for recommendations, Inkster said that it was important to promote good government and economic opportunity around the world.
“If I hear one more speaker suggest that the root of terrorism is poverty I’ll probably become a terrorist myself,” he joked. “But we have to acknowledge that it’s a factor.”
As for the West, he said: “We should keep our nerve and our faith in our own values. Our own behaviour—especially with respect to the rule of law—is very important.”
A 28-year-old delivery man from the UK who bought a Nikon Coolpix camera for about $31 on eBay got more than he bargained for when the camera arrived with top secret information from the UK’s MI6 organization.
Allegedly sold by one of the clandestine organization’s agents, the camera contained named al-Qaeda cells, names, images of suspected terrorists and weapons, fingerprint information, and log-in details for the Secret Service’s computer network, containing a “Top Secret” marking.
He turned the camera in to the police.
The website Cryptome has a list of 276 MI6 agents:
This combines three lists of MI6 officers published here on 13 May 1999 (116 names), 21 August 2005 (74 names), and 27 August 2005 (121 names).
While none of the 311 names appeared on all three lists…35 names appeared on two lists, leaving 276 unique names.
According to Silicon.com:
It is not the first time this kind of information has been published on the internet and Foreign Office policy is to neither confirm nor deny the accuracy of such lists. But a spokesman slammed its publication for potentially putting lives in danger.
On the other hand:
The website is run by John Young, who “welcomes” secret documents for publication and recently said there was a “need to name as many intelligence officers and agents as possible”.
He said: “It is disinformation that naming them places their life in jeopardy. Not identifying them places far more lives in jeopardy from their vile secret operations and plots.”
Discuss.
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.