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Comment by fanf2 | Hacker News Reader

“For security reasons, all but a handful of employees here – such as the director – are known only by their first names.”

It was amusing going to tech meetings in London, when GCHQ/NCSC staff sometimes attend. The spooks are blatantly obvious with their first-name-only badges :-)

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It is a cute policy, a historical anachronism. In these days of internet databases and facial recognition the actual security advantage of not knowing someone's last name is minimal. Anyone who really wants to can find it.

As a basic first-order op, start with a the graduation photos of the elite British schools, which wouldn't be hard to get from their libraries. Pass that to some basic facial recognition software and within minute you will have all those secret last names.

.. and a visit from GCHQ informing you that you've breached the official secrets act.

Anyone who matters, anyone properly dangerous from whom GCHQ wants to hide, doesn't care much about official secrets acts. Any KGB (ie russia's FSB) wouldn't hesitate. But it would be an interesting exercise. A visit to the oxbridge libraries, then compare those faces to everyone walking the streets around MI5/6. Seems rather tame compared to all the other things we know have been done.

Entertainingly Bellingcat is doing the same thing to the GRU: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2020/02/25/an-officer-and-a-...

(people should stop using "KGB" to refer to any Russian intelligence service, it's just fighting a war that ended 30 years ago)

KGB means state security service. There are plenty of KGBs around the world in places like Belarus. Only russia has renamed its KGB to FSB.

You're definitely correct, but its more like "scrape Facebook and Linkedin in real time".

This measure is probably more about generating mystique that is useful for recruiting than it is about maintaining security.

I think I'd probably spend most of the meeting trying to find out their real names.

I'd like to ask them how they square the circle morally by supporting an agency that under the most optimistic interpretation breaks the law constantly.

That kind of thinking is compartmentalised into oblivion.

This has been solved: the home secretary can now authorise the security services to commit crimes completely legally.

They claim that they don't break the law.

Most of the UK laws do specifically have sections allowing the security services to operate.

At this point in time I’d almost go as far as saying those working in something as ethically disagreeable as cigarette production would be justified in guffawing at the hypocrisy should some tech worker bring up the morality of their work with them.

Yeah the UK would be much better off without an intelligence agency and if only the West would lay down its arms. Imagine!

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