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Teams of analysts at GCHQ now have the authority and the technical capacity to tap directly into the nervous system of the 21st century and peer into the lives of others. Only those in the intelligence community had heard of "Prism", another initiative that has given the NSA – and GCHQ too – access to millions of emails and live chat conversations held by the world's major internet companies, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple. Snowden wanted to reveal the extent of the surveillance activities being undertaken by GCHQ and its US equivalent, the National Security Agency (NSA), and the stories published by the Guardian have certainly done that.īefore the 30-year-old analyst turned whistleblower, only a few people outside GCHQ had heard of "Tempora", the programme that gives the agency access to the fibre-optic cables that carry the world's phone calls and web traffic only they knew it had developed an ingenious way of storing this material for up to 30 days. Today this intensely private organisation is under a spotlight it has never had to face before, as its methods and practices come under unprecedented scrutiny, thanks to the release of files that would otherwise have been locked away for another 30 years.
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It is now home to a parallel world – one that mirrors the society around it while being set apart by high walls of secrecy and the vastly superior technology concealed within. When it was built in 2002 the "doughnut" was the biggest construction project in Europe.
In a world of its own, GCHQ is a complex, secret community, tightly bound by its location outside the capital, the nature of its people, and the secrecy in which their work has to be done. "We can offer a fantastic mission but we can't compete with salaries," one briefing note lamented. Nobody at Cheltenham is particularly well paid, compared with the private sector at least – a junior analyst might earn £25,000. It has room for a sprinkling of accountants and librarians. The agency's 2010/11 recruitment guide says GCHQ needs high-calibre technologists and mathematicians familiar with the complex algorithms that power the internet. They make friends during annual family open days, or via messages on the agency's internal version of MySpace, which they have called SpySpace.Ĭolleagues are likely to find others cut from the same cloth. Staff date themselves on the internal directory, "GCWiki", by their "internet age", a measure of how many years they have been adept on the web. Describing itself as "GCHQ's ghost-hunting group", it is open to staff and their partners "whether they are sceptics or believers" for visits to "reputedly haunted properties". A member of Stonewall since last year, GCHQ has its own Pride group for staff who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. It has a chess club, cake sales, regular pub quiz nights and an internal puzzle newsletter called Kryptos. Last year, GCHQ organised trips to Disneyland in Paris, and its sailing club took part in an offshore regatta at Cowes. But it offers a glimpse into the world of the 6,100 people crammed into the open-plan and underground offices at GCHQ the fact that there is a sports day at all reveals something about the agency which most people outside their bubble could not appreciate. Of all the highly classified documents about GCHQ revealed by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, this has to be one of the least sensitive. No crocs, sandals or flip-flops will be allowed. "Each team MUST field at least ONE lady player at all times," the note said.