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Britain's MI6 Opens Its First Website 184

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the sshh-don't-tell-anyone dept.
An anonymous reader wites "Britain's spy agency the Secret Intelligence Service, known popularly as MI6, has opened its first website. While much about the agency is still not public, the website has information on service history and career opportunities for would-be spies. This rare peek at the real group popularized by the James Bond series brought over 3.5 million visits in its first few opening hours on Wednesday."
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Britain's MI6 Opens Its First Website More

Britain's MI6 Opens Its First Website

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  • First we know about (Score:5, Funny)

    by ewg ( 158266 ) on Sunday October 16, 2005 @06:40PM (#13805805)
    Their first web site that we know about.

  • Old news! (Score:2, Funny)

    by davecrusoe ( 861547 )
    Old news... it's a good thing that our submitters aren't in the intel business! Or.... are they?
    • Late information , Public Speculation , widespread leakage of intelligence , causing danger to innocents (servers) .
      I would say that they are running the intelligence agencies of the world .
      • >>"I get fairly frantic when I contemplate the idiocy of these louts" -
        Crowley on L-Ron Hubbard and Jack Parsons

        Aleister Crowley? :)

        • Re:Old news! (Score:3, Informative)

          by FidelCatsro ( 861135 )
          Naturally , Hubbard was an acolyte of Crowleys . Something of which most Scientologists are unaware .
          He was apparently not that good and a bit of a disappointment to the Thelamic order .
          Talking about that , Crowley did in fact work for MI6 and the American Intelligence agencies during WW2 helping with discovering some of the Nazi occult activities.

    • Re:Old news! (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      it's a good thing that our submitters aren't in the intel business! Or.... are they?

      You mean, as opposed to the AMD business?...

  • how long till it's hacked? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Elminst ( 53259 ) on Sunday October 16, 2005 @06:42PM (#13805814) Homepage
    Who wants to set up the betting pool on this?
    I bet the gambling websites would make a killing.

    I got $20 that says it gets wacked in under a week.

    Of course starting them out with a nice slashdotting probably doesn't help. heh

    • Re:how long till it's hacked? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Coryoth ( 254751 ) on Sunday October 16, 2005 @06:56PM (#13805864) Homepage Journal
      It depends on who is running it really. Being SIS rather than something more computer security oriented (like GCHQ [gchq.gov.uk]), I'd expect it is possible that they will get hacked. Places like GCHQ and the NSA on the other hand, who deal with information assurance and computer security as part of their role, tend to have far better records on that front. The NSA website has never been hacked, and given their profile you can be sure it isn't from lack of trying.

      Jedidiah.

  • Nice website (Score:4, Funny)

    by camelmix ( 880071 ) on Sunday October 16, 2005 @06:42PM (#13805819)
    Better than the FBI's or CIA :(

    • Re:Nice website (Score:4, Informative)

      by LnxAddct ( 679316 ) <sgk25@drexel.edu> on Sunday October 16, 2005 @07:18PM (#13805951)
      Well in defense of the FBI & CIA, both of their sites provide a lot more information. The SIS site provides minimal information so its easier to keep it clean. Regardless, the SIS site is not as cool as the NSA's [nsa.gov] :) (In particular the flash based one, its one of the few flash sites that are done well).
      Regards,
      Steve

      • Re:Nice website (Score:5, Funny)

        by nmb3000 ( 741169 ) on Sunday October 16, 2005 @07:39PM (#13806057) Journal
        Uh oh, looks like the NSA needs to watch what gets made public on their site.

        Crypto gear [nsa.gov] revealed!

        Some of these links [nsa.gov] are kind of interesting. How many tax dollars have been spent on stuff like this [nrojr.gov] (flash)?

        • Re:Nice website (Score:2, Insightful)

          by scaryjohn ( 120394 )

          How many tax dollars have been spent on stuff like National Reconnassiance Office for Kids? Not enough, if you subscribe to the theory that if it's worth doing, it's worth doing well.

          But there's a certian value in the idea of the site: if you work there, how are you going to explain what you do at work to your kids. Without having to kill them, I mean.

      • OBLinux: They even have their own linux distro you can download: http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/ [nsa.gov]

        • Re:Nice website (Score:2, Informative)

          by LnxAddct ( 679316 )
          It isn't a distro, they are kernel patches to increase the security of the kernel. The NSA worked closely with Red Hat to get them integrated, and now SELinux is supported in the mainline 2.6 kernel. Now they offer patches to bring your kernel more up to date.
          Regards,
          Steve

    • I dunno, the CIA's website is pretty nice (Score:5, Informative)

      by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Sunday October 16, 2005 @07:39PM (#13806058)
      After all it has the World Factbook. Probably the best resource I've ever seen for getting basic information on countries. For every country it has a map, gorgraphic and demographic information, information on the government, the military, communications, etc. If you hear a country mentioned, it's a great place to go to get basic background on that country. One would assume it's fairly accurate as well.

  • /. = News for Nerds.... five days late (Score:4, Informative)

    by MBraynard ( 653724 ) on Sunday October 16, 2005 @06:45PM (#13805828) Journal
    October 12. [timesonline.co.uk]

    Slow news day?

    • Next Generation (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Uukrul ( 835197 )
      When I was young "nerd" news were read on magazines. We must wait one month, but usually two or three to get some news of an event.
      Now anything older than 1 or 2 days seems old news.
      If a history is old 5 days after it arrises, may be that history isn't as important as to mention it. After a century of existence MI6 opens a web, and 5 days later isn't it interesting?

      Internet is a great site to read news, but makes people very impatient.


      • You were lucky. We lived for three months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o'clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down the mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got home, our Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!
    • "Slow news day?"

      Given the exact nature of how Slashdot gets its news to 'report', I'm not sure why anybody would be ill at them for being a few days late. By the time Slashdot posts the story, you could have heard it. Until they actually get reporters on their staff, this'll always be the case.
    • Why didn't you submit it 5 days ago then?

      I tried to, but strangely my connection kept going do%^!$%[NO_CARRIER]

  • Best bit (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 16, 2005 @06:46PM (#13805837)
    Best bit of the website has to be the operational careers profiles, http://www.mi6.gov.uk/output/Page74.html [mi6.gov.uk]

    James Bond, 42
    "I love women and martinins so the 'SIS' flexible work hours suit me perfectly."

  • Here's a question... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Manchot ( 847225 ) on Sunday October 16, 2005 @06:48PM (#13805843)
    So, is the website run by Q? If so, I must say that I'm a little disappointed that my computer doesn't explode when I click on the page three times.

  • SIS and James Bond (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CreateWindowEx ( 630955 ) on Sunday October 16, 2005 @06:52PM (#13805855)
    After reading about how the head of SIS (A.K.A. MI6) was called "C", I figured that surely at some point they would refer to James Bond on the site somewhere. When I found it, I was a little surprised that they didn't say the film had no basis in reality. I guess they're hoping to use the connection to help recruiting...

    From the FAQ [mi6.gov.uk]:

    Q: How realistic is the depiction of SIS in the James Bond films?

    A: James Bond, as Ian Fleming originally conceived him was based on reality. But any author needs to inject a level of glamour and excitement beyond reality in order to sell. By the time the filmmakers focused on Bond the gap between truth and fiction had already widened. Nevertheless, staff who join SIS can look forward to a career that will have moments when the gap narrows just a little and the certainty of a stimulating and rewarding career which, like Bond's, will be in the service of their country.

    • Re:SIS and James Bond (Score:5, Funny)

      by st1d ( 218383 ) on Sunday October 16, 2005 @07:02PM (#13805888) Homepage
      Perhaps my [British] english is a little rusty, but doesn't that translate roughly as:

      "This job is mostly tedious and boring work in places you never wanted to visit, but if you are lucky, perhaps you will make enough mistakes to get yourself into mortal danger."

      Gee, where can I sign up?!! :)

    • The CIA and Sydney Bristrow (Score:5, Funny)

      by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Sunday October 16, 2005 @07:08PM (#13805913) Homepage Journal
      Recently Jennifer Garner [wikipedia.org] did a recruiting commercial for the CIA. When I saw it, my first reaction was, "how do I know you're recruiting for the CIA and not for some other organization posing [wikipedia.org] as the CIA?"

    • Re:SIS and James Bond (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Quirk ( 36086 ) on Sunday October 16, 2005 @07:26PM (#13805995) Homepage Journal
      I went to school with one of the decendent relatives of William Stephenson, better known as Intrepid [sympatico.ca]. Mr. Stephenson was said to have fired Ian Fleming from spy school. The gossip I heard suggested Ian Fleming was undisciplined and perhaps not the brightest light.

      Through my family I've direct contact with people who have served in military intelligence. I know a few CSIS [csis-scrs.gc.ca] people and, I had the luck to spend ~14 hours locked in conversation with one of the architects of CSIS (he'd started out as a Polish citizen in WWII, was trained by what we came to know as the KGB, then he jumped ship to British Intelligence and finally came to Canada). He was an intelligent, insightful man but certainly far from a James Bond kind of a guy. His most telling trait, share by everyone I`ve met in the intelligence community, was a belief that things that needed to get done were best done covertly. I`ve been told that the best intelligence agents are inconspicuous. From everything I know I`d go with the "Danger Man" sort with the accent more on "The Prisoner".

      The Russians in the Cold War were infamous for simply walking up to someone in the know at a cocktail party and innocuously asking pointed questions about sensitive material; the person being questioned might well be caught off guard by the social setting and laid back approach.

      The only person I've known like a James Bond character was a Montreal vice cop who was an interpol agent [interpol.int], a martial arts expert and liked to review each violent episode he had lived through, but he wasn't anything like the intelligence people I've known. I doubt there are many, if any, James Bond types. There was a British sargent who, in the aftermath of WWII, was tasked with the assissination of deemed war criminals unlikely to be brought to justice. I saw him interviewed on the Discovery Channel. He was retired to a farm, spoke very unemotionaly about some of his excutions and showed a strong liking for Russian rifles as the then best assissination weapons. In the alternative, not to long ago, I met a British intelligence trained guy and while sharing a drink I brought up the subject of best gun for the job ( a 25 cal. in my opinion ). He dismissed the whole notion saying no one uses guns anymore. Theres a pin prick in your bottle of aftershave. You cut yourself shaving. Three months later you're dead.

      cheers

      • Ian Fleming and James Bond (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Whilst I can't comment about Ian Fleming being "fired from spy school", which sounds like a good yarn, I do know that Fleming served for some considerable time in the British Intelligence Service during WWII and held (as Bond did) the rank of Commander RN.

        Flemings experience of black ops in wartime directly influenced his concept of what an intelligence agent gets up to and his role in thinking up such ops exposed him to the "funny" sort of kit dreamed up by Q in the Bond books.

        Another connection with Bond
        • As noted, I related schoolboy gossip, but, curious to see if there's anything to substantiate my yarn, I ran a search and came up with a story from Camp X [idirect.com], a spy school run in Canada during WWII. The anecdotal evidence is that Ian Fleming couldn't go through with an order to kill a man in cold blood.

      • Re:SIS and James Bond (Score:2, Insightful)

        by klept ( 895849 )
        There's an old saying in the trade. Those who know dont talk, and those who talk usually dont know. Not trying to be insulting, but think about that next time one of these guys reveals "trade" secrets.

        • Re:SIS and James Bond (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Quirk ( 36086 ) on Sunday October 16, 2005 @10:16PM (#13806643) Homepage Journal
          Hi, no offense taken. If I had to sum up the makeup of an intelligence operative I'd say s/he avoids anything suggestive of transparency and accountability like the plague, and, knows, when things go wrong, when and for how long to hide in the broom closet. Careers are subject to the same politics in any field.

          As far as secrecy I go with the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY). [amazon.com]

          '.. one of the first members of the United States government openly to predict the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union--and, by extension, statist communism--as far back as the late '70s, as political historian Richard Gid Powers reminds readers in a lengthy introduction (comprising approximately one-fifth of Secrecy's total length). Had we spent less time trying to gather secret information about the Soviets and more time openly discussing rather easily interpretable data, Sen. Moynihan argues, we might have been far less paranoid about the supposed Red menace. The problem, he writes, lies in the essential nature of government secrecy: "Departments and agencies hoard information, and the government becomes a kind of market. Secrets become organizational assets, never to be shared save in exchange for another organization's assets.... The system costs can be enormous. In the void created by absent or withheld information, decisions are either made poorly or not at all."'

      • He was retired to a farm, spoke very unemotionaly about some of his excutions....

        That should be your first clue that these people are not really good guys, but just guys that happen to be working for us. This whole stupid spy business is glamorized but people forget that you basically need to recruit sociopaths for the murdering. You hire some people who have zero empathy and send them out to kill people.

        This is not James Bond, this is simply setting psychologically damaged people on assignments of dub

        • Fleming himself rather excellently portrayed a sociopathic spy in "From Russia With Love". Red Grant [wikipedia.org], the Irishman turned S.M.E.R.S.H. assassin is a perfect example of this type. The book goes into better detail than the movie, but Robert Shaw's interpretation is still very good.
        • This whole stupid spy business is glamorized but people forget that you basically need to recruit sociopaths for the murdering. You hire some people who have zero empathy and send them out to kill people.

          And this is different from a soldier in a regular army who's "just following orders" when they kill people, in what way exactly?

          N.
        • "That should be your first clue that these people are not really good guys, but just guys that happen to be working for us"

          And we should be deeply thankful that they are.

          We are free because rough men stand ready to do violence on our behalf - George Orwell
    • They're doing a fair bit of technical recuiting. Does this mean with the right skillset I get a double-zero number?
    • > James Bond, as Ian Fleming originally conceived him was based on reality. But any author needs to inject a level of glamour and excitement beyond reality in order to sell. By the time the filmmakers focused on Bond the gap between truth and fiction had already widened. Nevertheless, staff who join SIS can look forward to a career that will have moments when the gap narrows just a little and the certainty of a stimulating and rewarding career which, like Bond's, will be in the service of their country.

      T
    • Yeah John Le carre would be much more real MI5/6 material. They don't like him as much as jolly ol' 007 do they :) Too realistic maybe.

      007 does Basra... "Damn.. the bloody tank's on fire!"

    • I was a little surprised that they didn't say the film had no basis in reality.

      You shouldn't be, because James Bond was inspired by Ian Fleming's own work for British Intelligence during world war II. That's not to say that the bond films are in any way realistic, but they are at least inspired by reality.

  • This, I like. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by oberondarksoul ( 723118 ) on Sunday October 16, 2005 @06:58PM (#13805874) Homepage
    Having given the website a quick look, I'm pretty pleased with how it's turned out. The layout's clear and understandable, it's got a few images but not too many to be especially taxing, and it has some nice features - switching the globe from night to day is cool, and implemented without using Flash, hurrah! On the whole, not bad.

  • Not only that (Score:3, Funny)

    by sielwolf ( 246764 ) on Sunday October 16, 2005 @07:01PM (#13805884) Homepage Journal
    But they have a pretty good recipe for a Vodka Martini [mi6.gov.uk]. The Kilgour suit is optional.
    • But they have a pretty good recipe for a Vodka Martini.

      You need a recipe for it? It's simply 50 % of high quality vodka and 50 % Martini. Add a big green olive and you are done. It's one of my favorite drinks, and I've never been laughed at by a bartender when I've ordered one.

  • Click here [nytimes.com]. :)
  • Does anyone recognise (by the nature of the output) what CMS system this MI6 system is using?

    (I'm digging about for a CMS system that has some controls over content (approval, etc), is open source licensed [opensource.org], and outputs static content (ie: I don't want cgi generating every page view on the fly). This MI6/SIS site looks like it might be using something like that. Thoughts?)

    • Does anyone recognise (by the nature of the output) what CMS system this MI6 system is using?

      They could tell you. But then they'd have to kill you.

      The HTML looks handwritten to me. They're probably using something on a standalone system, then transferring it to an ISP. There will be no wired connection from the Internet to their internal systems. Q will have seen to that.

      ...laura

  • SIS is their name - but URL is mi6 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by daveb ( 4522 ) <davebremer@g m a i l.com> on Sunday October 16, 2005 @07:24PM (#13805988) Homepage
    I wonder why they use the domain name mi6.gov.uk when they make such a big deal of their REAL name being SIS, with Mi6 being mostly a movie thing

    see http://www.mi6.gov.uk/output/Page50.html [mi6.gov.uk]

  • 3.5mill visitors? (Score:3, Funny)

    by u2pa ( 871932 ) on Sunday October 16, 2005 @07:25PM (#13805991) Journal
    This rare peek at the real group popularized by the James Bond series brought over 3.5 million visits in its first few opening hours on Wednesday.

    Sounds to me as if this is a dupe, and its already been slashdotted :)
  • Hackers army [nyud.net]
    (Courtesy of Bilo and Nano [escomposlinux.org] )

  • Sandbaggers (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dogbreathcanada ( 911482 ) on Sunday October 16, 2005 @07:32PM (#13806025)
    For those interested in television that portrays the SIS in a reasonably accurate light, I highly recommend the Sandbagger series. Available on DVD too.
  • I want to know who thought it would be a good idea to have the main page be "/output/Page79.html"

    I see the other pages are 47, 53, 55, 65, 57....

    This is definitely a website built to governemt spec. Good job boys! :)

  • Languages (Score:4, Informative)

    by Geoffreyerffoeg ( 729040 ) on Sunday October 16, 2005 @08:59PM (#13806368)
    The language choices are interesting: English, Spanish, Russian, French, Arabic, and Chinese. My guess as to the reasons: English because it's Britain, Spanish because it's spoken by the non-anglophone Americas, Russian because the USSR was the Cold War enemy, French because it was the international language of diplomacy, Arabic because it's the language of the Middle East (the major intelligence interest today), and Chinese because it's the most common language per capita.

    Notable omissions are other European languages and Japanese. Arabic is a very notable inclusion.
    • Or another take is they are the languages spoken by the largest minority groups living in Britain today.

    • Re:Languages (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Those are also the 6 official languages of the United Nations. Maybe that is the reason?
    • It's interesting that those languages also correspond with the UN's official languages.
    • Far more likely is that the choice of languages reflects the regions in which we have an interest in recruiting HUMINT assets:
      • Spanish - mainly South America, perhaps for feeding to the US in exchange for intelligence of interest to the UK
      • French - the UK and the French have a long tradition of spying on each other, particularly with regards to economic interests. HUMINT would also be useful in Francophone areas of Africa, such as Algiers. French is also widely spoken in the middle east, I gather.
      • Russian -
    • It's not that surprising, really: an awful lot of geographic area is Arabic speaking. Arabic is one of the official languages of Interpol too, and has been for years.

    • French because it was the international language of diplomacy

      You obviously didn't read up on your British history. There is no other country with which Britain has been so much at war with, and distrusts so much at times of peace as France.

      Also French is the international language at the roulette tables.

      Knowing French is thus the sine qua non of British intelligence.

      (French is also a language spoken in most of West Africa, which is not entirely stable, and uncomfortably close to Europe.)
      • There is no other country with which Britain has been so much at war with, and distrusts so much at times of peace as France.

        IIRC, ever since the Crimean War in the late 1800s, there wasn't a war that Britain and France haven't been on the same side of. And if you want to get picky, Britain was on the same side as the French Loyalists during the Napoleonic Wars.

        Roulette has nothing to do with anything. You might as well say that French is the language of tennis or of Mardi Gras.

        Knowing French is thus the si

    • Or...... (Score:2)

      by N8F8 ( 4562 )
      Becasue those languages are the most common in England?
  • What? No Daniel Craig pictures?
  • This is a really great site, though I sorta hoped that when I went there I would have seen this [wizards.com].
  • Language Options:
    • English
    • Spanish
    • Russian
    • Arabic
    • Simplified Chinese (i.e. PRC Chinese)


    I guess that's the famous British politeness shining though. :)
  • ... but then I'd have to kill you.
  • It's good to see that they're sticking to the apparent official font of Britain [bbc.co.uk], Gill Sans [google.com].
  • There are downsides to working for British Intelligence and leaving. A friend did leave after realising he would never be promoted beyond a certain low level because he had not been to public (i.e. private, this is UK-speak) school. Several years later, having become a US citizen, he was being interviewed by a US security organisation as part of being recruited for a sensitive government project

    Security person: "We'll have to do background checks on you going back to the UK".
    Friend: "That's OK, I have ful

  • While MI5's Myths/FAQ section explicitly states that MI5 does not assassinate people [mi5.gov.uk], the question is not present in MI6's FAQs. (Incidentally, I personally don't believe that MI6 assassinates people, but I wonder if they deliberately left the question out).

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