{"id":34168,"date":"2018-05-11T07:51:41","date_gmt":"2018-05-11T12:51:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=34168"},"modified":"2018-05-11T07:52:08","modified_gmt":"2018-05-11T12:52:08","slug":"business-is-booming-for-the-u-k-s-spy-tech-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=34168","title":{"rendered":"Business is Booming for the U.K.’s Spy Tech Industry"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo: David Goddard\/Getty Images<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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BUSINESS IS BOOMING FOR THE U.K.\u2019S SPY TECH INDUSTRY<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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DRIVING INTO CHELTENHAM<\/u> from the west, it is hard to miss the offices of Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, the United Kingdom\u2019s surveillance agency. The large, doughnut-shaped building sits behind high-perimeter fencing with barbed wire and many levels of security. The facility \u2013 used to eavesdrop on global emails and phone calls \u2013 is located on the edge of the sleepy Gloucestershire town, which feels like an incongruous location for one of the world\u2019s most aggressive spy agencies.<\/p>\n

Cheltenham has a population of just 117,000 people, and GCHQ\u2019s presence has turned the area into one of Europe\u2019s central hubs for companies working in the fields of cybersecurity and surveillance. GCHQ says it employs almost 6,000 people in Cheltenham and at some smaller bases around the U.K., although the agency has in recent years secretly expanded its workforce, reportedly employing thousands more staff.<\/p>\n

People in the area are now talking of a cyber \u201ccorridor\u201d that stretches for 50 miles from Malvern, just north of Cheltenham, all the way to Bristol, where the Ministry of Defence has its equipment and support headquarters at Abbey Wood. Many quaint English towns, known for their farming and country pubs, have seen an influx of companies dealing in cybersecurity and electronic spying. Even office space on former farms<\/a>\u00a0is being used for this burgeoning industry.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Chris Dunning-Walton, the founder of a nonprofit called Cyber Cheltenham, or Cynam, organizes quarterly events in the town attended by politicians and entrepreneurs. \u201cHistorically, there has been a need for the companies that are working here to be very off the radar with their relationships with GCHQ and to some extent, that does exist,\u201d says Dunning-Walton. But since Edward Snowden leaked information in 2013<\/a> about GCHQ\u2019s sweeping surveillance activities, the agency has been forced to come out of the shadows and embrace greater transparency.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo: David Goddard\/Getty Images BUSINESS IS BOOMING FOR THE U.K.\u2019S SPY TECH INDUSTRY DRIVING INTO CHELTENHAM from the west, it is hard to miss the offices of Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, the United Kingdom\u2019s surveillance agency. The large, doughnut-shaped building sits behind high-perimeter fencing with barbed wire and many levels of security. The facility […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1511,5570,20093,20092,746,5567,2080],"class_list":["post-34168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-gchq","tag-mass-surveillance","tag-matt-kennard","tag-spy-tech","tag-spying","tag-the-intercept","tag-united-kingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34168"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34170,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34168\/revisions\/34170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}