What It Was Really Like Being A World War II Codebreaker Public Domain
By Natasha Lavender/Feb. 13, 2021 10:17 pm EDT
The image of a codebreaker trying to unscramble a seemingly meaningless string of numbers and letters in the dim light of a bunker comes from World War II. But during and after the war, those people we now understand as some of the most important behind-the-scenes heroes of the war effort were as secret as the ciphers they were trying to decrypt. It s only recently that we ve started to uncover what it was really like being a World War II codebreaker.
The Lawfare Podcast: Government Agencies that Really Listen To You: SIGINT in the UK
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has been conducting and regulating signals intelligence, SIGINT, since before the United States was born. To talk about how they do it across the pond, David Kris sat down with two experts on UK SIGINT and SIGINT regulation: Michael Drury and Tony Comer, both veterans of Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British counterpart to the U.S. s National Security Agency. Michael was GCHQ s first full-time legal advisor from 1996 to 2010, when he joined the private sector, and Tony was GCHQ s historian until his retirement earlier this year. They compared and contrasted the U.S. and UK experience with SIGINT, SIGINT regulation, popular support for SIGINT and intelligence in general, and also some cutting-edge issues, including how SIGINT works today, synergies between SIGINT and cyber, GDPR encryption and online harms.