Courts and bug product

[Ian Batten]

On 13 Feb 2008, at 23:58, Peter Fairbrother wrote:

>
> However the 10,000 figure is still likely to be correct.

In 1974?  I'd be very surprised.   When consultation was started for  
IOCA, there was surprise (to put it mildly) at requirements of one tap  
per thousand lines (http://www.demon.net/aboutus/pressroom/1999/pr003.html 
), and the current information on a Section 12 Notice (http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/documents/2000-cons-section-12-13/sect12order.pdf?view=Binary 
) says one per ten thousand.

Given the prevalence of party lines in the mid-1970s, ten thousand is  
going to be closer to one in a thousand than not.  It would mean  
multiple taps on every exchange and concentrator in the country:  
that's either a huge empire of tape recorders or an immense backhaul  
network.  I'm not saying it's impossible, but it would be a huge task  
to keep it quiet, given the extent of trade unionisation of the GPO.   
The most paranoid claims of security surveillance of unions, political  
activists and so on are nothing like ten thousand people.

I don't believe you could operate an interception capability that  
large, 90% or more of it black, on the UK population and keep it quiet  
for thirty years.    Yes, there's an awful lot of stuff that got put  
into the GPO/BT network that few people knew about, as we're finding  
as we work through the odds and ends of replacing the voice services  
for 21CN (not spooky stuff, just random services for small numbers of  
people that were done by people long retired but which continue to  
function on autopilot).  But the whole point was they required few  
people to operate them: this would be a horse of another colour.

I'm not saying it didn't happen: I have lunch most days with someone  
who might know, but is too discreet to say.  But I'm saying it fails a  
basic plausibility test.  I hope, pace Roland's proper sneer at people  
who believe all phones have GPS in them, that we don't answer any  
plausibility claim with ``ah, but MI5/6 have access to alien  
technology'', which is the basic argument of the more paranoid...

ian