The spying gameU.K. cyber-spy agency may sell technology to raise cash
The U.K. government is considering selling technical expertise developed by the hush-hush Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) to the private sector to raise money for the government; the cutting edge cyber-security and computer research carried out at GCHQ could potentially generate cash for the government, although any moves to involve the private sector would have to be handled carefully due to the highly sensitive nature of the signals intelligence material it handles
Here is a new way to raise funds for the cash-strapped U.K. government: The U.K. government’s secret listening agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) could sell its technical expertise to the private sector under plans being considered by the government.
Security minister Dame Pauline Neville Jones said ministers were “thinking about” ways in which GCHQ could supply services to private firms. “It’s a live issue,” she told the Commons science committee.
The BBC reports that scientists and cyber-security experts are employed at GCHQ, in Cheltenham, to monitor e-mail and phone traffic. Their work has always been considered top secret, but committee chairman, Labor MP Andrew Miller, asked whether the government was considering the “radical” step of the commercialization of products, working in partnership with the private sector.
“You are taking me on to ground, chairman, that we are thinking about,” Baroness Neville Jones told the MPs, adding that there were “many ways Cheltenham could supply a service to the private sector.”
She said, however, that the government was still considering how that might be funded and what the relationship between private firms and this branch of the security services might be and she could not comment further at this stage.
The top secret Defense Evaluation and Research Agency was privatized by the previous government, and floated on the stock exchange in 2006 as Qinetiq. although the most sensitive parts of its work remained under government control.
The BBC notes that the cutting edge cyber-security and computer research carried out at GCHQ could potentially generate cash for the government, although any moves to involve the private sector would have to be handled carefully due to the highly sensitive nature of the signals intelligence material it handles.
