The Null Device

Posts matching tags 'mi5'

2005/6/17

MI5 is warning British tourists to watch out for foreign spies when travelling abroad, or when returning from abroad:

The advice warns: "Lavish hospitality, flattery and the 'red carpet' treatment are used by some intelligence services to soften up a target for recruitment who may then feel obliged to co-operate rather than offend the hosts."
MI5 also urges sunseekers to be careful about holiday romances, as having sex with a stranger could make them vulnerable to blackmail. Tourists might also think twice about discussing national security within earshot of hotel staff or taxi drivers who in some countries are required to report to the local security service.
Holidaymakers are even being told to be alert on their return to Britain. MI5 has compiled a list of warning signals that could indicate a foreign intelligence service is "cultivating" them. They should consider contacting the police or their company's security co-ordinator if they come across people who prefer to meet face-to-face, want to become friends, or ask personal questions.

espionage mi5 paranoia uk 0

2004/5/29

A 14-year-old boy in Manchester used internet chatrooms to arrange his own murder; masquerading as, among others, a 16-year-old girl, her step-brother, and a secret service agent named Janet, he managed to talk a 16-year-old boy he had never met into stabbing him. The other boy was told that it was an initiation into the secret services, and that the target was dying of cancer, which made him expendable; if successful, he was told he would get £500,000, a gun and a meeting with the Prime Minister. It apparently did not occur to him that there was anything unusual about this arrangement (persumably that's standard MI5 procedure for recruiting teenagers in chat rooms).

Update: more details have emerged, and it turns out that the stabbee had a hopeless crush on the boy who stabbed him, and instructed him (in secret-agent guise) to say the "codeword" "I love you, bro" as he did the deed. This is sounding more and more like a Smiths song.

alienation angst crime manchester mi5 murder suicide 0

2000/5/26

Britain prepares to follow the Russian lead and institute universal monitoring of Internet traffic: (BBC News)

If the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Bill is passed, internet service providers will be forced to install black boxes in their data centres that connect directly to an MI5 monitoring centre in London.

mi5 surveillance uk 0

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