Spying and Conscience.

The National Security Agency (Photo credit: @mjb)

English: Cattle by GCHQ radio station This site was a World War 2 airfield, RAF Cleave. It is now GCHQ Composite Signals Organisation Station Morwenstow (being renamed GCHQ Bude). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

English: Lord Harold Wilson portrait (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 Edward Snowden follows in a long line of people employed in the spying game who, have had to consider whether or not they have a conscientious objection to what they are being asked to do. Not too long ago a young lady at GCHQ was threatened with prosecution, subsequently and rightly withdrawn, when she was troubled about  GCHQ's spying activities on The United Nations. In my own case, whilst working there, following a promotion I was transferred into the middle east section, and as you can  read here, immediately asked to be moved when, by chance, I discovered that the results of my analytical work were being passed to the Israelis. At the time I was young, but was well aware of what was going on in the middle east, and not only did I not take sides, but was also concerned about the appalling human rights records and the terrorist activities of the Israelis.
 To this day I am concerned about the issue and believe that GCHQ had a moral right to inform me of this, before I took up my duties in my new post. Eventually I was to leave over the ban on Trades Unions becoming an appellant against the ban as described here.
Whilst working at Bude I was also heavily involved in a rather curious incident. Harold Wilson had cleverly negotiated a deal over the site which would give the NSA the access that they desperately needed to civil and governmental communications going, by satellite, to and from the middle east. In the deal they were to pay for all of the equipment but the site was to be manned entirely by British personnel. The whole operation was run by American computers and software, coded at NSA.
The intelligence tasking was carried out by a joint Anglo/American team based in Cheltenham and when they hit problems I was the first point of reference, as The Computer Operations Officer at the site. One day whilst trawling through some code I came across something that I can only describe as a software switch. As previously stated all of the tasking came through Cheltenham but, hey ho, there was a program, which if enabled, would hand all of that tasking, and essentially control of the site to the NSA. But, Washington, you had a problem. The code had been installed many years before, probably when GCHQ Bude started its operations, but it clearly had never been tested as I discovered that it wouldn't work because of coding errors in the software.
 What to do? Had this been agreed between GCHQ and the NSA? I think not as I believe, particularly because of the importance of GCHQ Bude to the NSA (see the above link), it had been put there as a contingency measure should the British operations have problems. So, being the conscientious kind of guy I was I trotted off to my boss, a nice man for whom I had enormous respect, and notified him of what I had discovered. He immediately arranged for me to see the Officer In Charge who clearly, because of the political sensitivities, didn't want to know but suggested that I should go up to the Combined Opeations Centre at Cheltenham and discuss the matter. As I met with the British head of the section and the NSA officer serving alongside him in Cheltenham I was aware of some embarrassment, on their part, and it was suggested that I take it up with the head of the software team in the NSA the next time that I visited Washington. This I duly and dutifully did and a few days later the error in the software was fixed.
 Now, to go back to the start of this diatribe, was there ever an issue of conscience for me over this matter? I like to think that I had a pretty firm grasp of what was going on at Cheltenham and Bude at this time and I am as certain as one can ever be in these affairs, that at that time GCHQ and the NSA were not up to any of the dirty tricks against their own citizens and allies that they appear to have been doing in recent years. If they had been then, like Snowden, I would have been out, as I was eventually forced to do over a rather different issue of human rights. I guess when it comes down to it everyone has a duty to their conscience and anyone who uses the defence that they were just following orders should learn the lessons of the Nuremburg Trials. In the end it is only the rebel and the conscientious objector or whistle blower that we rely on to protect us all from the jack boot of government.