Protected by five rings of barbed wire in a park outside the town of Milton Keynes, northwest of London, is an unusual manufacturing workshop.
It had never opened its doors to the media in its 85-year history. Until now.
At Her Majesty’s Government Communications Center (HMGCC), in Hanslope Parkwhat at first glance seem like everyday objects are produced.
But behind it is a surprising story involving codebreaker Alan Turing, sealed rooms and comparisons to top-secret devices from James Bond films.
Exclusive access
What is the reason for such strict security? that these objects They are made for UK spies and help camouflage their work.
BBC has obtained exclusive access to its facilities, so we must hand over our phones and security personnel accompanies us at all times.
We get a glimpse of what’s going on inside, as HMGCC tries to find new partners to stay ahead in the world of espionage.
“We have made it really hard for people to connect with us and that, throughout our history, has been a very good way of working,” explains CEO George Williamson.
But he believes that the time has come to change, even if it seems “strange” to him.
With its anonymous-looking buildings, the place looks like an industrial estate.
Engineers, physicists, chemists, designers, coders and other specialists work in what is described rather confusingly as a “mix of art and engineering.”
In some areas they make us wear anti-static clothing and in others they show us a bewildering variety of machines, including ones that make electronic circuit boards, laser cutters and 3D printers (labeled Darth Vader, Luke and Leia in homage to Star Wars).
But what exactly are the creations of these machines for? Part of the problem is that, even though I try hard to know, no one is going to tell me. This is because the products that leave here They are highly classified material.
The history
But we can find clues in the past. The HMGCC was created on the eve of World War II, when spies and diplomats in Europe needed to communicate secretly and securely with the United Kingdom.
This led to the creation of covert radio systems that could be smuggled in a diplomatic bag. Officials fleeing Warsaw after the German invasion of Poland in 1939 used some of them to spread news of what was happening.
When the war began, this evolved into the manufacture of smaller radio sets that could be issued to MI6 agents parachuting behind enemy lines in occupied Europe to collect and send intelligence information.
During the war, Alan Turing lived and worked in Hanslope Park. Famous for cracking Nazi codes at nearby Bletchley Park, he worked at the HMGCC to develop a device that would provide voice encryption.
The system used by British and American wartime leaders Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt weighed 50 tons.
Turing’s prototype, called Delilah, superimposed the noise of a record player on top of voice. It was portable, ahead of its time and gives another clue to what is built there today.
modern spies
“I suspect that a timeline can be traced directly back to what was happening there 70 or 80 years ago,” Turing’s nephew, Sir Dermot Turing, explains to the BBC.
“The need for secure communications has not gone away,” he says.
So how does this relate to the modern world? To this day the undercover agents operating in so-called “denied areas”like Russia or Iran, need to communicate.
Although the HMGCC does not comment, other sources assure that modern spies They depend on devices such as clandestine transmitters. They can be made to look like ordinary objects and send information in fractions of a second. I imagine that’s what they do here, but no one wants to say it.
Another object they show me provides an additional clue as to what the HMGCC does.
It’s a car radio speaker that dates back to the 1930s. Hidden in the back is a secret transmitter.
Communication is a part of the job. Apparently so are the hidden listening and tracking devicesalthough, once again, the officials remain silent when I ask them.
“For most of our 85 years we have produced secure communications systems that allow people in remote, often difficult and dangerous locations to communicate secretly with the UK,” Williamson says.
And he adds that, in the case of some national security agencies, “we can help them in some of their research work by producing technologies that allow them to do things like surveillance.”
One of HMGCC’s clients is the domestic intelligence service MI5, which may need to eavesdrop on a suspect at their home in the UK or track them in a vehicle.
This could involve camouflaging a listening device like an everyday object that no one would detect. What the object could be is another thing that no one here wants to talk about.
Like in James Bond movies
The temptation is to say that all this is like James Bond’s “Q Branch”. Experts believe that the comparison is not entirely correct; I suppose they don’t make things that explode or cars with rocket launchers, but one can’t be totally sure.
In a rubber-floored room, two staff members test electrical devices to make sure they don’t accidentally shock anyone. Items made here are tested elsewhere in extreme hot and cold temperatures to ensure they can still transmit and receive.
One of the strangest places they show me is called Stargate, a sealed container lined with small gray foam spikes. When I’m locked up, I feel a little like I’m in a modern version of a medieval torture chamber.
The room has a rotating platform that moves a device with sensors that test what type of pattern a particular communication device emits.
That could help figure out the likelihood of being detected by a hostile state and also, perhaps, how to identify any devices being used on our territory.
Opening after decades of secrecy
Within fairly strict limits, the HMGCC is opening to the worldbecause you know that new technologies are being developed in small startups and academia that could be vital to your mission.
Even if a technology is linked to areas that have nothing to do with national security, there could be uses that the developers are unaware of.
In the past strict security canons would have made collaboration impossible, but the hope is that this can now happen.
“The idea is that we can put our engineers and their big ideas in the same room with people from industry or academia,” Williamson says.
And he claims that “in that magical moment when different ideas come together, something really special will emerge“.
But how that technology is used is likely to remain as secret as almost everything else in this place.
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