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Geoffrey Prime
Geoffrey Arthur Prime (born 21 February 1938) is a former British spy who disclosed information to the Soviet Union while working for the Royal Air Force and later for the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), a British intelligence agency responsible for signals intelligence during the 1960s and '70s. Prime was convicted in the early 1980s under charges of espionage and child sexual abuse. He was sentenced to a total of 38 years imprisonment, and released from prison in 2001. Life Prime grew up in Staffordshire. After attending St Joseph's College,Stoke-on-Trent and having satisfactorily completed O-levels in languages, he became a junior wages clerk at a factory. In 1956, he was selected for National Service in the Royal Air Force (RAF). Due to colour blindness, he became a store man in the RAF. He was later sent to learn Russian at the Joint Services School for Linguists (JSSL) in Crail, Scotland. He was appointed as an acting sergeant after having demonstrat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a Federation, federal union of Republics of the Soviet Union, fifteen national republics; in practice, both Government of the Soviet Union, its government and Economy of the Soviet Union, its economy were highly Soviet-type economic planning, centralized until its final years. It was a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with the city of Moscow serving as its capital as well as that of its largest and most populous republic: the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Russian SFSR. Other major cities included Saint Petersburg, Leningrad (Russian SFSR), Kyiv, Kiev (Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Ukrainian SSR), Minsk (Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, Byelorussian SSR), Tas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cheltenham
Cheltenham (), also known as Cheltenham Spa, is a spa town and borough on the edge of the Cotswolds in the county of Gloucestershire, England. Cheltenham became known as a health and holiday spa town resort, following the discovery of mineral springs in 1716, and claims to be the most complete Regency town in Britain. The town hosts several festivals of culture, often featuring nationally and internationally famous contributors and attendees; they include the Cheltenham Literature Festival, the Cheltenham Jazz Festival, the Cheltenham Science Festival, the Cheltenham Music Festival, the Cheltenham Cricket Festival and the Cheltenham Food & Drink Festival. In steeplechase horse racing, the Gold Cup is the main event of the Cheltenham Festival, held every March. History Cheltenham stands on the small River Chelt, which rises nearby at Dowdeswell and runs through the town on its way to the Severn. It was first recorded in 803, as ''Celtan hom''; the meaning has not been resolved ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Byeman Control System
The BYEMAN Control System, or simply BYEMAN (designated BYE, or B), was a security control system put in place to protect information about the National Reconnaissance Office and its operations. History The BYEMAN Control System was put in place in 1961 by the Central Intelligence Agency. Discussions regarding BCS retirement were held as early as 2003. NRO Director Peter B. Teets spoke at a 2003 NRO Town Hall meeting, mentioning that retiring the BCS would remove barriers that prevented the NRO and U.S. Intelligence Community from working together as a team. The use of BCS was so prevalent throughout the U.S. Intelligence Community, that a handful of websites were set up to direct users through the retirement process. Origin of name An individual inside the CIA's Special Security Center chose the name from a random list of four words drawn from the CIA's codeword file. A ''byeman'' is a man who works underground; it is unknown if the individual knew the word's meaning before its ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Rusbridger
James Rusbridger (26 February 1928 – 16 February 1994) was a British author and historian on international espionage during and after World War II. Biography He was born in Jamaica, son of Gordon Rusbridger an Army colonel, and died in Tremorebridge, Cornwall. His career started in the naval design office of Vickers Armstrong. Then he was salesman and managing director of a commodities firm specialising in sugar, and claimed to have been paid by the CIA to weaken the international market for Cuban sugar. He was an Eastern Europe courier for MI6 (or the British Secret Intelligence Service) from 1962, retiring in 1974. His books mainly relate to World War II, but his letters and articles after retirement were critical of British and American agencies. In his books he asserted that: *''Betrayal at Pearl Harbor:'' Winston Churchill concealed warnings about Pearl Harbor from Franklin D. Roosevelt in order to get America in the war. But In a 1991 interview on Japanese televisi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Banstead Railway Station
Banstead railway station serves the village of Banstead in the borough of Reigate and Banstead in Surrey. Its wider definition of Banstead Village and Nork wards is relevant here as both are equally well served by it as it lies narrowly in the latter. The station and all trains are operated by Southern and it is on the Epsom Downs line, part of the Sutton & Mole Valley Line services. It is between and , down the line from , measured via West Croydon. Housing and gardens in Banstead in this area border Greater London 500m away to the north. Accordingly, since January 2006, the station has been included in Travelcard Zone 6. The station lies some distance to the north-west of the High Street on the edge of Banstead Downs. Station buildings The station was opened by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway on 22 May 1865 as part of the Epsom Downs branch line. The branch was originally laid as double track to accommodate Epsom Downs horse race traffic and was electrifie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abbey Wood
Abbey Wood is an area in south east London, England, straddling the border between the Royal Borough of Greenwich and the London Borough of Bexley. It is located east of Charing Cross. Toponymy The area takes its name from Lesnes Abbey Woods, located to the east, which once belonged to the monks of Lesnes Abbey. Development The Abbey of St Mary and St Thomas the Martyr at Lesnes (or Lesnes Abbey) was founded in 1178 by Richard de Luci, Chief Justiciar of England. The Abbot of Lesnes Abbey was an important local landlord, and took a leading part in draining the marshland. However, this and the cost of maintaining river embankments was one of the reasons given for the Abbey's chronic financial difficulties. It never became a large community, and was closed by Cardinal Wolsey in 1525, under a licence to suppress monasteries of less than seven inmates. It was one of the first monasteries to be closed after the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1524, and the monastic buil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dead Drop
A dead drop or dead letter box is a method of espionage tradecraft used to pass items or information between two individuals (e.g., a case officer and an agent, or two agents) using a secret location. By avoiding direct meetings, individuals can maintain operational security. This method stands in contrast to the live drop, so-called because two persons meet to exchange items or information. Spies and their handlers have been known to perform dead drops using various techniques to hide items (such as money, secrets or instructions) and to signal that the drop has been made. Although the signal and location by necessity must be agreed upon in advance, the signal may or may not be located close to the dead drop itself. The operatives may not necessarily know one another or ever meet. Considerations The location and nature of the dead drop must enable retrieval of the hidden item without the operatives being spotted by a member of the public, the police, or other security forc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Minox
Minox (pronounced ) is a manufacturer of cameras, known especially for its subminiature camera. The first product to carry the Minox name was a subminiature camera, conceived in 1922, and finally invented and produced in 1936, by Baltic German Walter Zapp. The Latvian factory VEF (''Valsts elektrotehniskā fabrika'') manufactured the camera from 1937 to 1943. After World War II, the camera was redesigned and production resumed in Germany in 1948. Walter Zapp originally envisioned the Minox to be a camera for everyone requiring only little photographic knowledge. Yet in part due to its high manufacturing costs the Minox became more well known as a must-have luxury item. From the start the Minox also gained wide notoriety as a spy camera. Minox branched out into 35 mm film format and 110 film format cameras in 1974 and 1976, respectively. Minox continues to operate today, producing or branding optical and photographic equipment. History From 1936 to 1975, the history of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Microdot
A microdot is text or an image substantially reduced in size to prevent detection by unintended recipients. Microdots are normally circular and around in diameter but can be made into different shapes and sizes and made from various materials such as polyester or metal. The name comes from the fact that the microdots have often been about the size and shape of a typographical dot, such as a period or the tittle of a lowercase ''i'' or ''j''. Microdots are, fundamentally, a steganographic approach to message protection. History In 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War, Paris was under siege and messages were sent by carrier pigeon. Parisian photographer René Dagron used microfilm to permit each pigeon to carry a high volume of messages, as pigeons can carry little weight. Improvement in technology since then has made even more miniaturization possible. At the International Congress of Photography in Paris in 1925 Emanuel Goldberg presented a method of producing extreme red ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
One-time Pad
In cryptography, the one-time pad (OTP) is an encryption technique that cannot be cracked, but requires the use of a single-use pre-shared key that is not smaller than the message being sent. In this technique, a plaintext is paired with a random secret key (also referred to as ''a one-time pad''). Then, each bit or character of the plaintext is encrypted by combining it with the corresponding bit or character from the pad using modular addition. The resulting ciphertext will be impossible to decrypt or break if the following four conditions are met: #The key must be at least as long as the plaintext. #The key must be random ( uniformly distributed in the set of all possible keys and independent of the plaintext), entirely sampled from a non-algorithmic, chaotic source such as a hardware random number generator. It is not sufficient for OTP keys to pass statistical randomness tests as such tests cannot measure entropy, and the number of bits of entropy must be at least ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Invisible Ink
Invisible ink, also known as security ink or sympathetic ink, is a substance used for writing, which is invisible either on application or soon thereafter, and can later be made visible by some means, such as heat or ultraviolet light. Invisible ink is one form of steganography. History One of the earliest writers to mention an invisible ink is Aeneas Tacticus, in the 4th century BC. He mentions it in discussing how to survive under siege but does not indicate the type of ink to be used. This was part of his list of the 20 different methods of secret communications in a book called ''On the Defense of Fortifications''. One of the techniques that involved steganography involved puncturing a tiny hole above or below letters in a document to spell out a secret message. This did not include an invisible ink but the Germans improved on the method during World War I and World War II. They used invisible ink and microdots instead of pinpricks. Philo of Byzantium may be the first write ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tradecraft
Tradecraft, within the intelligence community, refers to the techniques, methods and technologies used in modern espionage (spying) and generally, as part of the activity of intelligence assessment. This includes general topics or techniques (dead drops, for example), or the specific techniques of a nation or organization (the particular form of encryption (encoding) used by the National Security Agency, for example). Examples * Agent handling is the management of espionage agents, principal agents, and agent networks (called "assets") by intelligence officers, who are typically known as case officers. * Analytic tradecraft is the body of specific methods for intelligence analysis. * Black bag operations are covert or clandestine entries into structures or locations to obtain information for human intelligence operations. This may require breaking and entering, lock picking, safe cracking, key impressions, fingerprinting, photography, electronic surveillance (includi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
