Anyone want to be the next James Bond?

The real thing that is, not the film version.
This little packet will send you on your way - they're looking for folks with all sorts of background, but especially, mathematicians and linguists. Ooo, I've just thought we've got both types in our family. I do have to point out that this package hasn't been accidentally left in a wine bar in Pimlico, it is a bone fide object. Seriously, if you want to join British Intelligence, check out this website..

GCHQ has had quite an amazing past, emerging from the wartime Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, near to Milton Keynes. The Queen was there a couple of days ago to pay tribute to the thousands of WWII codebreakers who, it is estimated, cut two years off hostilities in Europe by allowing the Allied Command to read Hitler's 'Enigma' coded messages. GCHQ moved to bases in Cheltenham after the war and in 2003 they shifted a few miles west to a brand new super building nicknamed the doughnut, surprise surprise, because of it's shape.

Here they no doubt have a number of super-computers such as the Cray or IBM Blade systems. It was at Bletchley that the first electro-mechanical computer in the world was built called the Bombe with the help of the genius mathematician Alan Turing, a man who was not treated very gratefully after the war and unfortunately took his own life.

GCHQ has, allegedly, a number of data collection sites around the world, and is said to part of the much wider 'Echelon' data sharing system and under the UK-USA Agreement is linked with the US National Security Agency (NSA) as well as those in Australia, Canada and New Zealand. I suspect they are snooping on satellite communications, fibre-optic and radio transmissions, from around the world. Phone conversations could be listened to and emails read.

Should we be afraid? Well that depends on who you are and what you're up to. The days of monitoring everything must surely be gone as the phone and email traffic is absolutely enormous now, so I presume that our governments would listen in to an individual's communications only if they had prior intelligence that they were of interest to them. As for spying on governments, well I would expect they spy on everyone. Remember British Foreign Policy for hundreds of years has been team up with the second strongest power in Europe against the biggest. We may look a little further afield than Europe now, but the principle is the same.

Sorry if this has been a little long-winded or not your cup of tea, but it has been raining most of the day and this box was staring at me!