US To Combine Multiple Intelligence Missions Into Single UK Complex

The United States is in the midst of preparing its largest intelligence hub outside of its own national borders. The center will accommodate operations with reach into several global areas, including those rife with anti-terrorism operations. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being poured into the work that includes consolidating resources from other installations.

A U.S. Air Force construction budget document for fiscal year 2015 says the project is necessary to support responsive and agile theater, joint and all-source intelligence analysis and production; to gain and maintain information dominance; and to support strategies of active security through Building Partnership Capacity and partner nation engagement missions. Officials will establish the purpose-built Joint Intelligence Analysis and Production Complex at RAF Croughton in Northamptonshire, England. The base is a Royal Air Force Station used by the U.S Air Force as a communications station. RAF Croughton’s intelligence missions include use as a relay station for CIA communications, and U.K. media reports peg it as a support site for U.S. drone attacks in locations outside of Europe. Alterations to the location to accommodate its new tenants include changes to various networks on the installation.

The Defense Department plans to construct $317 million worth of new facilities at RAF Croughton to accommodate the six intelligence organizations operating at RAF Molesworth and to supply other necessary support infrastructure for incoming personnel, according to testimony by John Conger, acting deputy undersecretary of defense (installations and environment), in March. Though the center will be certified for joint use and will include multinational partners, the Air Force will provide the full funding.

The base is taking on intelligence missions from RAF Alconbury in Huntingdon, England, and RAF Molesworth, situated near Molesworth, England, both of which have been discussed for base realignment and closure actions. Those two installations are geographically close, and along with RAF Upwood, make up what is known as the Tri-Base Area. The three share various support units and facilities.

This planned consolidation of missions comes after a review by leadership in the U.S. Defense Department. U.S. European Command (EUCOM), headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, conducted a thorough analysis of 14 different locations both in Europe and within the continental United States while making its basing decision. Officials additionally examined a recapitalization of the existing facilities. Based on the commander’s approved criteria, the analysis concluded with RAF Croughton as the best installation for the relocation of the operations. Once the EUCOM commander approved the recommendation, the decision went to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which subsequently added its approval. According to a Defense Department official, “It is important to clarify that we are not building to accommodate a new mission; we’re just recapitalizing existing missions already being performed in the United Kingdom.”

The facility will include three distinct, collocated tenants each with its own mission to support Headquarters EUCOM, Headquarters U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, or SHAPE. To carry out the missions, several disparate organizations will supply personnel and other resources to the new center, including EUCOM and AFRICOM. Intelligence groups also will be represented, including the U.S.-based Defense Intelligence and National Geospatial-Intelligence agencies. The NATO Intelligence Fusion Centre (NIFC) brings an international contingent. The NIFC is located in the United Kingdom. It is a U.S-sponsored, military-led organization that contributes to NATO Allied Command Operations intelligence activities.

The initiative has three phases that will begin in fiscal years 2015, 2016 and 2017. The first phase is a $92 million project. The defense official says construction for each phase is anticipated to take approximately two years. The moves are expected to save the United States millions of dollars each year and to move personnel out of outmoded facilities on World War II-era bases.

In his testimony, Conger explained that current facilities supporting U.S. and partner nation intelligence analysis, engagement and training missions at RAF Molesworth are inadequate to support current analysis requirements and require substantial sustainment, restoration and modernization (SRM) funding. The existing mission facilities at RAF Molesworth include 21 widely dispersed and degraded buildings offering only 60 percent of the space authorized by the Unified Facilities Criteria.

Total intelligence personnel number approximately 1,250, and the dispersed layout inhibits intelligence collaboration. The department also has concerns that overcrowding contributes to safety concerns and an unhealthy working environment. “Short-term repairs and temporary facilities are used to keep intelligence work areas and systems functional,” Conger stated. The Defense Intelligence Agency and Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence have spent around $90 million in SRM and for leased modular facilities that require recapitalization every seven years, which he said is not cost effective. The Air Force’s fiscal year 2015 construction budget document lays out that work space is needed for approximately 1,200 personnel with a rapid expansion capability to integrate up to 81 Joint Reserve Intelligence Support Element Reserve personnel during surge operations.

Conger explained his organization considers the intelligence-mission consolidation a prototype of the European Infrastructure Consolidation. The situation could result in annual recurring savings of $75 million. Conger reported a reduction in restoration and modernization funding required to alleviate $191 million in SRM backlog and a reduction of approximately 350 combined military, civilian and local foreign national personnel. “These figures demonstrate a relatively rapid payback of our upfront investment,” he stated.

By Rita Boland

The Escape Artists

Honey badgers escape from their enclosure using anything from mud balls to rakes.

Courtesy Of: The BBC

Frankfurt: An American Military-Intel Metropolis

Espionage, Logistics, Attacks Orchestrated from the U.S. Consulate

It’s understandable that the guards standing outside the U.S. Consulate General in Frankfurt are a little nervous. The building used to house the U.S.’s largest military hospital. Now it looks more like a fortress with its high walls, barbwire, antitank barriers, security cameras and guards with machineguns. But is it really an offense to stand in front of the building here, on the sidewalk? Or, better put, does a dawdling passer-by really necessitate two police cars and American security officers? Really?

“What are you doing here?” one officer asks.

It’s no wonder they’re so nervous here. This consulate plays a supporting roll in the worldwide NSA spying scandal from here in Germany. This is where a unit of the Special Collection Service (SCS) is based. SCS is a joint NSA-CIA program allegedly responsible for tapping the German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone in Berlin. That information was made public through documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

But the German government knew about the SCS agents operating in the American consulate in Frankfurt long before the Merkel phone scandal. If they didn’t it’d be hard to explain the helicopter that the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV, Germany’s domestic security agency) sent to fly low over the consulate, taking high-resolution photos. They apparently wanted to find out whether there were any listening devices on the rooftop—like those suspected to be on the roof of the U.S. embassy in Berlin.

A Ministry of the Interior spokesperson says, “the BfV conducts air surveillance routinely, or as is necessary,” on “specific properties of certain foreign nations,” as part of its “counter-espionage” efforts. Loud and clear. ‘Counter-espionage’ leaves little to interpretation.

Camouflage of the Consulate

The use of the word ‘consulate’, on the other hand, might be a bit misleading in the case of the U.S. consulate in Frankfurt. ‘Consulate’ brings to mind gala receptions and visa paperwork. Not abductions or secret prison planning. And it definitely doesn’t bring to mind a camouflaged headquarters for CIA operations or an appropriate place for the Secret Service to have offices. But a few weeks ago we also never would’ve thought there was a listening station on the top of the embassy in Berlin.

The U.S. consulate in Frankfurt, with its 900 employees, is not only the largest in the world, but also acts as one of the largest foreign branches of the Virginia-based CIA.

Frankfurt is the U.S.’s German intelligence capitol. CIA agents, NSA spies, military intelligence officers and the Secret Service all work there. Within a 40 kilometer, or 24 mile radius the U.S. has built up a strong network of outposts and sham offices. But the center is, as far as we can tell, at the consulate.

Everything on lockdown and top secret? Not so much. Even the police around the consulate admit CIA officers work inside.

We’d love to ask the U.S. Consulate General about it and hear what they have to say.  But the consulate says there won’t been anyone there for the next few weeks with whom we could speak. A visit would not be possible either. Maybe because there’s even more to talk about than was given away by the NSA leaks.

Loading Dock for the ‘War on Terror’

To the right of the consulate entrance there’s another entryway guarded by watchmen. A sign on the door reads “Warehouse”. Every few minutes, delivery trucks drive up and the guards use mirrors to check for explosives on the underside of the automobiles. Then the drivers are allowed to continue. They’re directed to a large flat-roofed building where heavy deliveries sit and behind them, high-security containers wait for overseas shipment.

This is the largest American logistics center outside the U.S. From here the military, the CIA and other agencies supply their bases all over the world. This is where the journey begins for supplies headed to Afghanistan, Pakistan and probably Yemen and Somalia. Some are everyday objects, and some not-so-ordinary wares. Horse feed and saddles were bought in Frankfurt for the CIA’s special assignments in Afghanistan, according to one former head of the CIA in Germany. The Frankfurt Regional Support Terminal supplies whatever the ‘war on terror’ calls for. Even when it came to requests requiring some sensitivity. Such as when, after 9/11, the U.S. tried with all its might to bring the suspected masterminds of the attacks to justice. That was a task for the CIA in Frankfurt as well.

The long-time CIA agent Kyle Foggo, AKA “Dusty” was tasked with planning out three secret prison sites for the U.S. government. At these “black sites” the CIA interrogated many high-level terror suspects. Foggo orchestrated it all from Frankfurt, making sure all the interrogation chambers looked exactly the same, whether they were in Morocco or Poland; plywood walls, non-slip flooring and a plastic chair. Same appearance, same size. The prisoners were meant not to be able to figure out what country they were in—making it very difficult, later, to pin any human rights violations on the CIA. Only the utensils used in waterboarding (a long plank to which the victim is strapped, water bucket and a towel—to make sure the victim doesn’t really drown) did not come from Frankfurt. Those things were supplied locally. Foggo, who organized it all, was officially on the payroll at the U.S. consulate in Frankfurt at the time.

Military-Intel Metropolis

Frankfurt—more precisely, the greater Frankfurt area—plays a prominent role in the U.S. intelligence apparatus. Many key locations are here. For instance the mysterious Dagger Complex in Darmstadt, some 32 kilometers, or 20 miles south of Frankfurt. The military arm of the NSA’s spy troop is stationed here, isolated by a grove. The United States Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) and NSA officers of the European Cryptologic Center all work here as part of the “largest analysis and production location in Europe”, as it was put in one NSA report in 2011. Millions of pieces of data are filtered, sorted and—if necessary—decrypted and evaluated. Sometimes using the XKeyscore software made public by the NSA leaks.

From the outside, you can’t see the Dagger Complex compound. You can’t see what has been done with the millions of dollars invested here over the last few years. The most important part of the Dagger Complex is actually underground. From the so-called ICEbox American spies have monitored and intercepted communications since 2004, when they moved here from another base in southern Germany. Since then the Frankfurt area has become increasingly important for the U.S., even as public furor over the spying programs has grown. And the greater Frankfurt area will only become more important in the future.

Long after leaving the complex, the police are calling. Why are you looking around at the Dagger Complex? Research, we say. The policeman replies jokingly: There’s still an open cell in Guantanamo.

Soon the U.S. won’t need their German helpers in Darmstadt any more. The base is planned to be closed and the colleagues sent over to barracks in Wiesbaden, 30 kilometers, or 18 miles west of Frankfurt. There they’ll surely meet new colleagues from the NSA and INSCOM, as they’re headquartered there. It sounds like a place where you’d be able to get a closer look. But, we were told, a visit was not possible. Not so much as a phone interview.

One place you can get information is on the U.S. database of government contracts, which says $124 million was spent on the new intelligence analysis control center. Only U.S. companies with security clearance will be allowed to do construction there. It’s planned to be almost 12,000 square meters, almost 40,000 square feet and be occupied by some 1,500 “intelligence professionals” who will work in three shifts.

The most ‘American’ German State

The heart of the U.S. surveillance apparatus beats in the western-central German state of Hessen. Why here? Several reasons: the central positioning, the growing U.S. presence and the large international Frankfurt airport. Maybe also simply because Hessen has long been more ‘American’ than any other German state. Traditionally the lion’s share of U.S. soldiers in this country has been stationed here. This is where, in 1948, the air bridge to Berlin was orchestrated, and where, during the Cold War, 100,000 soldiers stood watch. This is where the reconnaissance flights over the USSR took off and later thousands of flights departed toward the Gulf War and even later, to Afghanistan.

Most U.S. military flights are now handled by the nearby Ramstein airbase. That’s where the Islamist Abu Omar was transferred after CIA agents abducted him in Milan. Omar was taken to Egypt where he disappeared into a torture cell for more than a year. Twenty-three U.S. agents were later convicted in absentia to long prison sentences in Italy—a symbolic victory for the rule of law. The U.S., of course, never allowed the agents to be extradited.

Parts of Omar’s abduction were planned in Frankfurt. The investigators followed the trail from a Frankfurt hotel, to an elusive trucking company at the airport, to the U.S. consulate.

All the trails—coming from and leading to U.S. intelligence agencies—converge here.

When two special agents detained an Estonian hacker and fraudster in the Frankfurt Airport—although it’s illegal for U.S. agents to do so in Germany—all roads led to Frankfurt.

The address printed on the business cards of the two agents read: U.S. Secret Service, Frankfurt Resident Office, 30 Giessener Street. The address of the U.S. consulate.

Plan To Split Army Into Two Forces

Structural Reforms Will Include Expanding Special Operations

By KIM SENGUPTA
TUESDAY 19 JUNE 2012
Courtesy Of "The Independent"


The British Army is to undergo drastic structural reforms in the face of budget cuts and the changing face of conflict. Plans being drawn up will see the force split in two, with greater emphasis placed on undercover special operations, intelligence, surveillance and cyber warfare, The Independent has learned.

A blueprint entitled Army 2020 has been drawn up by Lieutenant General Nick Carter, who has been tasked with the Army's reorganisation while overall numbers are cut by a fifth. It recommends the separation of "Reaction" and "Adaptable" forces, enabling the UK to respond in an emergency while also preparing for longer-term deployment.

In addition to the Carter plan, senior officers – including, it is believed, General Sir David Richards, the head of the military – want to expand the type of combat carried out by the SAS and the SBS as well as Istar (Intelligence Surveillance Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance). They also want to focus on cyber security, which they argue is vital for a "lighter, more agile" type of combat.

Although the scheme will take time to come to fruition, the plans have been heavily influenced by the events of the Arab Spring, the confrontation over Iran's nuclear arsenal and the possibility of an Israeli attack as well as lessons learned from Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. Senior officers are urging caution over British involvement in Syria and only basic contingency plans have been made for such an operation. 

There is, however, much more planning for the aftermath of a possible Israeli strike on Iran.

One idea that will be considered in expanding special operations is the enlargement of the role of the Special Forces Support Group (SFSG), which is based around members of the 1st Battalion Parachute Regiment and augmented by troops from the Royal Marines and the RAF Regiment. The Group, which backs up the SAS and SBS, may be opened up to recruitment from a wider array of regiments. The proposals will also include expected reductions of five infantry battalions and two armoured regiments, although no regimental cap badges will be lost. The final details have not yet been finalised but, according to defence sources, the Parachute Regiment and the brigades of Guards and Gurkhas will largely escape the cuts. However, Gurkha recruits who joined reinforcement companies – set up to make up a shortfall – will face redundancy.

Two Scottish battalions are set to be axed, but Downing Street is said to be delaying signing this off because it does not want to provide a propaganda boost to Alex Salmond and the SNP with a referendum on independence on the horizon. English regiments, the Yorkshires and the Mercians, and the Royal Tank Regiments are believed to be vulnerable to losing soldiers.

The "Reaction" force, according to confidential documents, will be comprised of three armoured brigades, each with a tank regiment, two infantry regiments and an airborne brigade, commanded by a major general and armed with two regiments of Apache helicopter gunships and Warrior fighting vehicles. One armoured and one airborne battle group will be on standby.

The "Adaptable" force will consist of seven infantry brigades able to deploy for two to three years while maintaining a permanent presence in the Falklands and Cyprus. The days of 13-year commitments – which the Afghan mission will come to by the time it ends – are over, it is felt. "Not only would something like that be logistically impossible in the future, but would show a failure of strategy," said one senior officer.

No less than 30 per cent of the "Adaptable" force is meant to be made up of reservists who will "shadow" regular soldiers in exercises in preparation.

Israel Has One Of World's Largest 'EavesDropping' Bases

The base, near Kibbutz Urim, is central to the activities of the main Israel Defense Forces signals intelligence unit, 8200, according to report in Le Monde Diplomatique.

By Yossi Melman
Published 01:19 05.09.10
Latest update 01:19 05.09.10
Courtesy Of "Haaretz NewsPaper"

Israel has one of the largest signals intelligence (SIGINT) bases in the world in the western Negev, Le Monde Diplomatique reported. The base, near Kibbutz Urim, is central to the activities of the main Israel Defense Forces signals intelligence unit, 8200, the report says.

According to the report, the base has 30 antennas and satellite dishes of different sizes and types, capable of eavesdropping on telephone calls and accessing the e-mail of "governments, international organizations, foreign companies, political groups and individuals."

One of the base's main purposes is to listen to transmissions from ships passing in the Mediterranean, the report says. The base is also the center of intelligence activity that "taps underwater communication cables, mostly in the Mediterranean, connecting Israel with Europe."

The data collected at the Negev site is relayed for processing to a 8200 base near Herzliya, the paper says. Other reports say 8200's base is near the Mossad headquarters, which receives the intelligence along with IDF units, the paper says.

The report quotes a former soldier in 8200 who said her job was to intercept telephone calls and e-mails in English and French.

"It was very interesting work, which centered on locating and identifying the 'gems' out of routine communications," she said.

The report says that the base's antennas can be identified if you go to the right websites. The antennas there are lined up in rows, it says.

The author of the article, Nick Hager, is a New Zealand investigative reporter specializing in intelligence and technology related stories involving signals intelligence. In 1996 he wrote a book on the role of New Zealand in international intelligence gathering, and discussed cooperation between New Zealand, the U.S., Britain, Australia and Canada.

Le Monde Diplomatique repeats assessments in Israeli and foreign media about 8200's contribution to Israel's intelligence capabilities.

The unit has several bases, and is described as being the main body for signals intelligence collection in Israel, according to the report and other foreign media. Besides SIGINT, which involves communications, it also deals in ELINT, collecting signals from various electronic sources, including radar.

There are also 8200 units specializing in code breaking.

The unit's great, known successes include the interception of a telephone call between Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser and King Hussein of Jordan during the first day of the Six-Day War, and the interception of the telephone call between Yasser Arafat and the terrorist group that hijacked the Achille Lauro cruise ship in the Mediterranean in 1985.

Hager compares the Urim base's capabilities to those of the U.S. National Security Agency, Britain's Government Communications Headquarters and a similar organization in France.

"However, there is one difference," he says at the end of the report. While those units were uncovered long ago, "the unit at Urim remained unknown until this report."

China's Secure Communications Quantum Leap

By Matthew Luce
August 26, 2010
Courtesy Of "Asia Times Online"

A team of 15 Chinese researchers from Tsinghua University in Beijing and the Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences, a government-directed research center, in May published a research paper announcing a successful demonstration of "quantum teleportation" (liangzi yinxing chuan) over 16 kilometers of free space.

These researchers claimed to have the first successful experiment in the world. The technology on display has the potential to revolutionize secure communications for military and intelligence organizations and may become the watershed of a research race in communication and information technology.

Although much of the science behind this technology is still young, quantum technologies have wide-ranging applications for the fields of cryptography, remote sensing and secure satellite
communications. In the near future, the results from this experiment will be used to send encrypted messages that cannot be cracked or intercepted, and securely connect networks, even in remote areas, with no wired infrastructure, even incorporating satellites and submarines into the link [1].

Roots In Quantum Physics, Applications In Intelligence

Rather than transporting matter from place to place, quantum teleportation's most practical applications currently involve using photons for instantaneous, almost totally secure data communication. Using the term "teleportation" to describe this effect can be justified by what Albert Einstein called "spooky action at a distance": after two particles are linked together through quantum entanglement, any change in the state of one particle immediately alters the other, even from kilometers away. In effect, the state of the particle at the sender's end is destroyed and reappears as an exact replica at the receiver's end, with a negligible chance of undetected third-party interception [2].

While the teleportation of physical matter remains science fiction at this point, quantum teleportation could be immediately implemented as a means for secure communications and cryptography. Current encryption techniques are based upon mathematical functions involving very large prime numbers and secure key management and distribution, but this strategy has a number of drawbacks and is nearing the end of its shelf life.

In particular, as computing power continues to double every year and computer bits speed up through the use of quantum particles, the cryptographic keys used for encoding and decoding must now be changed more often to prevent encrypted data from being cracked. As a result, it has become very difficult to "future proof" the encryption of data, and were any major breakthrough in quantum computing to be achieved in the near future, current encryption techniques could become obsolete and encrypted data could suddenly become unprotected [3].

The security of using quantum teleportation to distribute cryptographic keys, on the other hand, is upheld by the laws of physics and has a seemingly infinite time horizon. These keys cannot currently be detected and cracked even with the help of the most powerful computers. Owing to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, the quantum states of photons cannot be observed without changing the state of the particle, which has the result of immediately informing the sender and receiver of any eavesdropping. Quantum communication can thus be used to send the most sensitive information, including keys to decode encrypted data sent over less secure means.

Significance Of The China's Achievement

As a result, the issue has found itself at the center of a rapidly developing geopolitical race to apply quantum technology to military and intelligence work. Since secure quantum key distribution (QKD) provides a much higher level of security between communication networks, employing quantum teleportation over a satellite network allows for completely secure communications, even in sensitive and remote areas, without fiber optic infrastructure, as long as all parties are able to maintain line of sight with a satellite. This could have wide applications in communications and intelligence for ground troops, aircraft, surface ships and submarines, and fits into China's current plans to grow its satellite network even further.

Using quantum teleportation to send this type of information has been technically possible for several years, but according to the Chinese research paper, it had been previously demonstrated experimentally only over an enclosed fiber optics network and then only over a distance of several hundred meters [4].

The Chinese experiment appears to shatter these records by claiming to be the first to use a high-powered blue laser to exchange quantum information over a free space channel, and to demonstrate the principle over a distance as great as 16km. This distance is significant because it displays approximately the same degree of light distortion as is seen in communication from the earth's surface to a satellite, and so would allow for quantum communication using satellites. If this experiment were indeed the first of its kind, it would appear that China has succeeded in leapfrogging the West, and gained a significant edge in next-generation communications and cryptography.

A Quantum Space Race?

The Chinese claim to be the first may not be entirely accurate, although certain elements of their experiment were unique and innovative. In 2005, a group of universities and defense corporations under a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) grant and led by BBN Technologies, the company responsible for developing the precursor to the Internet, succeeded in transferring cryptographic keys over a free-space link of 23 km in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Well beyond the single link employed by the Chinese, the BBN program has developed an expanding, multi-node web of secure quantum communication that will be able to further expand and link seamlessly with existing Internet technology [5]. There are a few differences in the physics of their experiment that still make it notable and may not technically disqualify the Chinese from claiming their status as first, but nonetheless American researchers seem to have had a five-year head start in demonstrating the principles of the technology.

However, one notable difference between the Chinese and American experiments is that the Beijing experiment used a blue laser for their teleportation experiments while the BBN team had been employing infrared. Both have advantages and disadvantages in range and power, but the primary difference in their applications seems to be that blue and blue-green lasers penetrate further into water and so have wider applications for sub-surface communications. China is currently modernizing its submarine fleet as a way to project force further past its coastal waters to deter any US naval response to a potential invasion of Taiwan as well as doing significant research into laser communications in submarines [6].

Quantum laser links with satellites would allow sub-surface communication without most of the traditional downsides of radio communications and allow subs to operate with even greater autonomy and silence [7]. Judging from the interest in blue lasers for underwater communication and the interesting choice of a blue laser for the teleportation experiment, it would be safe to venture a guess that applications for quantum communication are already beginning to find their way into Chinese military research and development.

Because of its security level and applications for satellite and submarine communications, quantum communication technology figures centrally in the objectives of the Chinese military to upgrade their growing command and control capabilities. A functional satellite-based quantum communication system would give the Chinese military the ability to operate further afield without fear of message interception.

However, Chinese researchers must also be aware of the potential for the United States to employ the same technology and may be seeking ways to counter this eventuality. While it is still almost impossible to intercept quantum messages without being detected, it may be feasible to jam the laser signals that send them with "optical noise" or other lasers. Understanding the ways in which quantum cryptography functions may also eventually expose further weaknesses in the network that can be exploited by a savvy adversary.

China's continuing cutting-edge quantum cryptography, lasers and optics research thus seems as much a reaction to the same research in the United States and an attempt to counter it as it is to develop its own indigenous network.

Conclusions

All of these potential uses are motivations for Chinese labs to be the first to develop successful applications of quantum technology for immediate deployment and to claim milestones like being the first to successfully execute teleportation over several miles of free space.

Besides the military uses and academic prestige, this accomplishment could attract a significant amount of international funding for China's developing optics industry, and if quantum teleportation becomes the new paradigm for the future of secure communications, China would like to make a name for itself as the premier research and development hub. Claims of this recent "first" for China then have that much greater significance for security and the continued health of US technological superiority.

Notes

1. Jin Xian-Min, et al. "Experimental free-space quantum teleportation." Nature Photonics 4, 376 - 381 (2010). Published online: May 16, 2010 doi:10.1038/nphoton.2010.87. See also the Chinese Academy of Sciences review. 


2. Lei Zhang, Jacob Barhen, and Hua-Kuang Liu. "Experimental and Theoretical Aspects of Quantum Teleportation." Center foe Engineering Science Advanced Research, Computer Science and Mathematics Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (2000).

3. David Pearson, "Building a QKD Network out of Theories and Devices," BBN Technologies (December 2005).

4. The Chinese paper cites R Ursin, et al. "Quantum teleportation across the Danube" and I Marcikic, et al "Long-distance teleportation of qubits at telecommunication wavelengths," both descriptions of quantum cryptography over hundreds of meters of optical fiber.

5. Chip Elliott, et al. "Current status of the DARPA Quantum Network." In Quantum Information and Computation III, edited by Eric J. Donkor, Andrew R. Pirich, Howard E. Brandt, Proceedings of SPIE Vol. 5815 (SPIE, Bellingham, WA, 2005).

6. See Yingzhuang Liu and Xiaohu Ge, "Underwater laser sensor network: a new approach for broadband communication in the underwater." Department of Electronics & Information Engineering, Huazhong University for Science and Technology (May 2006).

7. These include detectability, the need to surface to communicate, limitations in range, and the reliance on cryptographic keys that may be cracked. 

Matthew Luce is a researcher and Chinese linguist at Defense Group Inc’s Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis, where he does primary source research and analysis of China’s science and technology policies and development programs. Mr. Luce's research and writing focuses on cyber security, C4ISR-related technologies, and China's ethnic relations. He has worked and traveled extensively in China and speaks and reads fluent Chinese. 

This article first appeared in The Jamestown Foundation. Used with permission.) 

(Copyright 2010 The Jamestown Foundation.)

The Key To Global British Power

GCHQ: The Uncensored Story Of Britain's Most Secret Intelligence Agency

By Richard J Aldrich
Reviewed by Mahan Abedin
August 28, 2010
Courtesy Of "Asia Times Online"

“GCHQ provides intelligence, protects information and informs relevant UK policy to keep our society safe and successful in the Internet Age“, so reads the headline message on the Government Communication Headquarters website. This is a classic example of British understatement, effortlessly disguising what is in fact the most strategic asset in British foreign policy formulation and implementation.

If there is one single organization that explains the longevity of the United Kingdom's global reach in the post-colonial period, then it is surely the GCHQ, a massive worldwide eavesdropping enterprise, which obtains over 80% of the United Kingdom's intelligence and provides critical support to both the domestic Security Service (MI5) and the foreign Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), as well as the British armed forces.

Founded more than 90 years ago, the GCHQ specializes in the art of secret listening, and after America's National Security Agency (NSA), it is the most prolific signals intelligence (sigint) agency in the world.

It is against this backdrop of global dominance and strategic indispensability that Richard J Aldrich's GCHQ: The uncensored story of Britain's most secret intelligence agency, immediately attracts elevated significance. A scrupulous researcher, Aldrich's main achievement has been to construct an independent and non-official history of the GCHQ. 

Indeed, unlike many other academics and journalists who write about intelligence history - in particular Cambridge historian Christopher Andrew - Aldrich does not appear to be tied to the British secret state. This independence from British intelligence enables Aldrich to put the GCHQ's successes and failures into perspective. However, Aldrich fails to draw the correct strategic lessons from the totality of his findings and that is the biggest flaw of his book. 

A Global Spying Network 

The GCHQ's origins date to November 1, 1919, with the founding of the Government Code and Cypher School (GCCS). Over the next two decades, the GCCS gradually came to be known as the GCHQ and from 1946 onwards the latter name was invoked more or less exclusively. 

The GCHQ's mission is to collect signals intelligence, which can incorporate a wide range of communications and accompanying specialist tasks, including communication intelligence (comint), electronic intelligence (elint) and many other "ints". But in essence, sigint is the unauthorized interception of communications sent by wireless, satellite or electronic means. The GCHQ's core expertise is cryptography, namely the breaking of codes and ciphers and in turn the innovation of new and stronger cryptographic techniques and systems. 

The GCHQ's main task is to attack the encryption systems of other countries, entities and individuals. Additionally, the eavesdropping agency is a provider of protective security to British government departments, helping them to encrypt and otherwise protect their most sensitive documents and data. 

Aldrich provides a coherent and chronological history of the GCHQ and displays a refreshing ability to explain the spy agency's highly technical and complex work to the lay reader. However, the majority of his findings have been exposed by other publications since the 1980s, when journalists, academics and former spies began to write about the British intelligence community in earnest.
While there is not much new in the book, Aldrich's work rises above other efforts to some degree in the effortlessly fluent and scrupulously researched manner in which he has presented his findings. 

Any book on the GCHQ cannot ignore Bletchley Park and "Ultra", the highly secret program to decrypt German radio signals and other communications during World War II. The remarkable effort at Bletchley Park is now widely considered to have given the United Kingdom and the Allies a significant edge over Germany and thus shortened the war by at least 12 months. 

While Aldrich recounts the exploits at Bletchley Park, he is keener to unravel the mystery of the post-war UKUSA Agreement, a much misunderstood subject, whose unraveling has not been helped by sensationalist and conspiracy-oriented reporting and analysis. Often referred to as "Echelon" by the global media, this agreement is widely understood to underpin Anglo-American domination of the sigint realm and by extension the world of secret intelligence. 

Using declassified files and other sources Aldrich outlines the intricacies of the UKUSA Agreement as more a "complex network of different alliances built up from many different overlapping agreements" than a single treaty. UKUSA soon incorporated a second tier of Anglo-Saxon countries, namely Canada, Australia and New Zealand, thereby creating a massive sigint network with global coverage. 

Aldrich's main contribution to the understanding of Echelon is his detailed description of the periodic tensions underlying the core UKUSA sigint agreement. Most importantly, he recounts the episode in July 1973 when the legendary American statesman Henry Kissinger ordered an abrupt termination to all intelligence cooperation with the UK as a retaliatory measure over disputes on European security policy. 

While this row proved temporary and cooperation soon resumed in earnest, fissures in the cross-Atlantic intelligence relationship continued to fester beneath the surface. According to Aldrich, tensions reached new heights in the mid-1980s when William Eldridge Odom, the then head of the NSA, determined to reorient American sigint cooperation away from the UK. 

While Aldrich depicts the notoriously abrasive Odom in a negative light, he does, however, convincingly question his plans to forge closer ties with the German BND (responsible for both human intelligence and sigint), because of the latter's aggressive and increasingly global sigint activities in the 1980s, which even included cooperation with the Taiwanese code-breaking agency. 

Aldrich's work suffers from key flaws. First, his treatment of commercial encryption is short and thin on details to the extent that he appears not to have a deep and specialized understanding of this topic. The proliferation of commercial encryption software in the past 20 years has been a major headache for Western sigint organizations, and although these agencies have expended considerable effort at subverting commercial encryption, there are still a range of products that defeat even the most concerted and sophisticated cryptanalytic attacks. 

Aldrich also largely falls for the GCHQ and NSA line that it is only organized criminals and terrorists who stand to benefit from strong encryption, neglecting to explain that there may be legitimate reasons why a wide range of actors would want to hide the contents of their communications from the prying eyes of the GCHQ and the NSA. 

Second, the latter chapters of the book, in particular the final chapter entitled "From Bletchley Park to a Brave New World?", steadily deteriorate in analytical quality. Aldrich appears to be arguing that the GCHQ has been overwhelmed by the global communications revolution - underlined by the explosion in the use of e-mail and mobile phones - and is consequently struggling to find its bearings in the 21st century. 

This betrays a remarkably unimaginative mindset, for surely if there is anything to be learnt by the forensic study of the GCHQ, it is that it is always several steps ahead of the game. Indeed, it is very difficult to believe that immensely resourceful and far-sighted agencies like the GCHQ and the NSA - which employ the best mathematical brains on the planet - would be drastically wrong-footed by developments in the wider world. 

Aldrich's mistake in underestimating the predictive capacity of the GCHQ leads him to make another and this time an altogether far more serious error, and one with profound political consequences.
He argues that the development of the Big Brother society in the UK and the Western world in general, characterized by the mass capturing and storage of ordinary individual and commercial data (the great majority of which are "in clear", ie in non-encrypted form) by sigint agencies and their commercial subsidiaries and allies, is a consequence of conscious choices made by citizens. 

In other words, by choosing to make prolific and in some cases doubtless excessive use of new communications technologies, we have invited the GCHQ to intrude into and map out every aspect of our lives. This is a dangerously complacent and lazy argument. 

Aldrich's description of this so-called brave new world where "no one is in control" sums up the analytical poverty of the last chapters of his book. It inevitably gives rise to the suspicion that despite his intense 10-year research, the author doesn't appear to fully grasp all the dimensions of this highly sensitive topic. 

Finally, Aldrich fails to apply his findings to potential developments in international relations in the years and decades ahead. The world of sigint is changing beyond recognition - with super-computers and cyberspace defining the new battle grounds - and any aspiring global power would be wise to make massive investments in this domain. 

GCHQ: The uncensored story of Britain's most secret intelligence agency by Richard J Aldrich. HarperPress, June 2010. ISBN 9780007357123. 688 pages. 


Mahan Abedin is a senior researcher in terrorism studies and a consultant to independent media in Iran. 

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