New Scientist - July 27, 2019

(やまだぃちぅ) #1
27 July 2019 | New Scientist | 31

Exhibition


Top Secret: From ciphers to
cyber security, Science Museum,
London, to 23 February 2020


HOW’S this for a cool recruitment
campaign? In 2015, people on their
way to work at tech companies in
London paused, drawn by a curious
message pressure-washed into the
paving stones outside their offices.
“GCH-WHO?” the message ran,
“TECHNICAL OPPORTUNITIES”,
with a website address.
It was the work of GCHQ – the
UK’s Government Communications
Headquarters (before 1946, the
Government Code and Cypher
School). It is, and always has been,
quite unnervingly on-trend. During
the second world war, it wove
recruitment adverts into crossword
puzzles to attract the sort of people
who could break the German
Enigma and Lorentz ciphers.
Today, among other duties,
cryptanalysts and other specialists
help foil terrorist attacks (20 since
the beginning of 2017), and still
find time to tinker with Lego
(their model of the Doughnut,
GCHQ’s main building in
Cheltenham, resembles a
souped-up Millennium Falcon).
Only officially acknowledged
since 1994, GCHQ is 100 years
old this year and a new exhibition
called Top Secret is a sort of
celebration. It isn’t a history of
GCHQ, but a series of snapshots
which, while putting a positive
spin on the work of the country’s
intelligence agencies, still manages
to ask pointed questions about
cryptography, privacy, espionage
and the right to know.
A map of trench communications


lines and telephone points from the
first world war introduces us to the
messy world of communication in
wartime. GCHQ was born out of a
need to build a safe, coordinated
system comprising electronically
secure Fullerphones, ordinary
telephones, telegraph signals,
Morse and semaphore signalling,
messenger dogs, carrier pigeons,
lights, message-carrying rockets
and dispatch messengers.
This daunting task hasn’t got
any easier. But it has vanished from
sight, as communications were first
electrified, then digitised, before
vanishing into a near impossible-
to-comprehend cryptographic cloud.
During the second world war,
GCHQ’s Bletchley Park base played
a leading role in the development
of information technology. Here
the story is reduced to fascinating
essentials: a copy of a German
Lorentz machine, one of the few
surviving components from an Alan
Turing decoder known as a bombe,
and, most evocative of all, a set
of homemade rod-and-spindle
calculating devices, used by human
“calculators” early on in the war.

The story of UK-based Soviet
agents Helen and Peter Kroger and
the activities of the frighteningly
effective Portland spy ring in the
1960s (they stole plans for the UK’s
first nuclear submarine) stand in for
the whole cold war. The couple’s
elaborate equipment for hiding and
transmitting secret messages is
exhibited in a loose mock-up of
their dreary suburban living room.
Volunteers are on hand to flesh
out the stories. But don’t expect
anything after 1983 to make sense.
That was the year the internet was
invented, scrambling our notions
of privacy, anonymity and public
interest. Now, every time we search,
chat, date and shop, we feed vast
data sets, from which commercial
companies, states and rogue actors
extract many kinds of profit.
There are now more internet-
connected devices in the world than
people, some almost as terrifying
as the My Friend Cayla doll on show,
condemned in Germany in 2017 as
an “illegal surveillance” device. Look
into its dead eyes and remember: no
one can claim with confidence that
they aren’t being watched. ❚

Special phones and
ciphers made secure
communications possible TH


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Secrets and spies


The kid in you (and your kids too) will love this amazingly


detailed glimpse into the secret state, says Simon Ings


Don’t miss


Visit
Growing Underground
Explore a pink-lit former
air-raid shelter in
Clapham, London, and
glimpse the future of
sustainable food at what
is billed as the world’s
first underground farm.
Multiple dates this week.

Read
Am I Dreaming?
(Atlantic) James
Kingsland’s mind-
boggling journey of
exploration reveals how
altered mental states,
from hypnotic trances
to virtual reality, can
significantly boost
our well-being.

Listen
The Mechanisms of
Psychiatric Disorders
are explored by Carmine
Pariante in a talk at the
Bethlem Museum of
the Mind in Beckenham,
London, on 3 August.
What therapeutic tools
will help the troubled
souls of the future?
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Want to know more about cyberwarfare?
Check out New Scientist’s coverage
newscientist.com/article-topic/cyberattacks
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