The creation of the Doughnut was the largest PFI project to date for the British government. Built to modernise and consolidate GCHQ's multiple buildings in Cheltenham, The Doughnut was completed in 2003, and GCH… Based in "The Doughnut" in the suburbs of Cheltenham, GCHQ is the responsibility of the country's Secretary of State … How GCHQ built on a colossal secret. CESG did not manufacture security equipment, but worked with industry to ensure the availability of suitable products and services, while GCHQ itself funded research into such areas, for example to the Centre for Quantum Computation at Oxford University and the Heilbronn Institute for Mathematical Research at the University of Bristol. [100], At another IPT case in 2015, GCHQ conceded that "from January 2010, the regime for the interception/obtaining, analysis, use, disclosure and destruction of legally privileged material has not been in accordance with the law for the purposes of Article 8(2) of the European convention on human rights and was accordingly unlawful". The Navy codebreakers in FECB went to Colombo, Ceylon, then to Kilindini, near Mombasa, Kenya. [27][28] GCHQ had a very low profile in the media until 1983 when the trial of Geoffrey Prime, a KGB mole within GCHQ, created considerable media interest. [12] Its public function was "to advise as to the security of codes and cyphers used by all Government departments and to assist in their provision", but also had a secret directive to "study the methods of cypher communications used by foreign powers". [66], In 2017, US Press Secretary Sean Spicer alleged that GCHQ had conducted surveillance on US President Donald Trump, basing the allegation on statements made by a media commentator during a Fox News segment. There are also degree and masters level courses. In 2013, GCHQ received considerable media attention when the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the agency was in the process of collecting all online and telephone data in the UK via the Tempora programme. The House of Lords had to decide whether this was reviewable by judicial review. [13] HM Treasury paid £216m toward a newly agreed budget of £308m, having initially refused to finance the original high figure. [3][14] Construction materials were primarily steel, aluminium, and stone, particularly granite and local limestone from the Cotswolds; designers incorporated recycled materials in the steelwork and the construction of desks. Appeals to British Courts and European Commission of Human Rights[31] were unsuccessful. [13] It was titled the "Government Code and Cypher School", a cover-name which was chosen by Victor Forbes of the Foreign Office. Government Communications Headquarters, commonly known as GCHQ, is an intelligence and security organisation responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance to the government and armed forces of the United Kingdom. Until recently, Britain’s major intelligence and security organisation, GCHQ, was spread across two sites in the UK. [39] The Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Jonathan Aitken, subsequently held face to face discussions with the intelligence agency directors to assess further savings in the wake of Quinlan's review. [30], In 1984, GCHQ was the centre of a political row when the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher prohibited its employees from belonging to a trade union. "The Doughnut" is the nickname given to the headquarters of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), a British cryptography and intelligence agency. [92][93][94], Furthermore, the IPT ruled that the legislative framework in the United Kingdom does not permit mass surveillance and that while GCHQ collects and analyses data in bulk, it does not practice mass surveillance. [32], The ban was eventually lifted by the incoming Labour government in 1997, with the Government Communications Group of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) being formed to represent interested employees at all grades. [115] It also published the GCHQ puzzle book in 2016 which sold more than 300,000 copies, with the proceeds going to charity. The Doughnut has twice been visited by Charles, Prince of Wales, since its opening. [3] About 3,000 kilometres (1,850 mi) of fibre optics were installed in the Doughnut by British Telecom, and about 10,000 km (6,000 mi) of electrical wiring were used in the building. The building is nicknamed 'the Doughnut'. [5] Below the garden are banks of supercomputers. GCHQ was formed on 1 November 1919 under the original name of the Government Code and Cypher School. GCHQ management aspired for the building to be as well known internationally as the Pentagon. [12] Sinclair merged staff from NID25 and MI1b into the new organisation, which initially consisted of around 25–30 officers and a similar number of clerical staff. https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Government_Communications_Headquarters GCHQ first came to Cheltenham in the 1950s. Its premises consist of single-storey army huts and the odd nondescript office block. [76], From 1952 to 1954, the intelligence mission of GCHQ relocated to Cheltenham; the Security section remained at Eastcote,[76] and in March 1954 became a separate, independent organisation: the London Communications Security Agency (LCSA),[76] which in 1958 was renamed to the London Communications-Electronic Security Agency (LCESA). We sure as hell can't lick terrorism on our own, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1374817/Plans-for-new-GCHQ-go-on-view-to-public.html, "A final look at GCHQ's top secret Oakley site in Cheltenham", "GCHQ criticised for huge move overspend", "Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ)", "Beautiful buildings to be nominated for awards", "Inside GCHQ: 'Caution: Here comes the BBC, "Prime Minister visited GCHQ in Cheltenham", "Prince Charles and Camilla visit GCHQ in Cheltenham", "GCHQ plans shelved as new site for staff identified", "Home Office Circular 018 / 2007 (Trespass on protected sites – sections 128–131 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005)", "Giant poppy made by 1,400 GCHQ intelligence agency staff", "GCHQ turns the Cheltenham 'doughnut' yellow to show support for Guide Dogs", "GCHQ to be lit up like a rainbow for International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia", "GCHQ showcases its volunteering and charity work at Community Day 2013", https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/gchq-signals-pride-in-its-gay-spooks-sg6lpxz970f, Gloucestershire Echo - Pictures of the construction of the Doughnut and the demolition of GCHQ's old buildings in Cheltenham, St Philip and St James Church, Leckhampton, Cheltenham High Street Halt railway station, Cheltenham Bournside School and Sixth Form Centre, Hatherley and Reddings Cricket Club Ground, Cheltenham Spa Malvern Road railway station, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Doughnut&oldid=1020489851, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 29 April 2021, at 10:53. It is located on a 71-hectare (176-acre) site in Benhall, in the suburbs of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, in South West England. For the GCHQ this means that it shares information with, and gets information from, the National Security Agency (NSA) in the United States. Appeal to the ILO resulted in a decision that government's actions were in violation of Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention. [47], Operations that used GCHQ's intelligence-gathering capabilities in the 1990s included the monitoring of communications of Iraqi soldiers in the Gulf War, of dissident republican terrorists and the Real IRA, of the various factions involved in the Yugoslav Wars, and of the criminal Kenneth Noye. [77], In the 21st century, CESG ran a number of assurance schemes such as CHECK, CLAS, Commercial Product Assurance (CPA) and CESG Assisted Products Service (CAPS). From 1952 to 1954, the intelligence mission of GCHQ relocated to Cheltenham; the Security section remained at Eastcote, and in March 1954 became a separate, independent organisation: the London Communications Security Agency (LCSA), which in 1958 was renamed to the London Communications-Electronic Security Agency (LCESA). The government, however, had a problem. A second book was published in October 2018. [43][47][48] In the mid 1990s GCHQ began to assist in the investigation of cybercrime. Aldrich (2010) suggests that Sir John Adye, the then Director of GCHQ performed badly in meetings with Aitken, leading Aitken to conclude that GCHQ was "suffering from out-of-date methods of management and out-of-date methods for assessing priorities". [12], For security reasons, GCHQ moved its own computers and technical infrastructure to the Doughnut, which caused the cost of its move to increase from £41m to £450m over two years. [23], An outstation in the Far East, the Far East Combined Bureau was set up in Hong Kong in 1935 and moved to Singapore in 1939. [12] It was initially under the control of the Admiralty and located in Watergate House, Adelphi, London. Much of the building, which was built into the side of a hill, was reinforced to survive possible attacks and had meeting rooms underground. [3] The director of GCHQ has no office; in 2014 director Iain Lobban described his desk as being located "within the shouting distance of lawyers". [20], On 1 June 2007 the building and its grounds were designated as a protected site for the purposes of Section 128 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005. The principal of these is with the United States (National Security Agency), Canada (Communications Security Establishment), Australia (Australian Signals Directorate) and New Zealand (Government Communications Security Bureau), through the mechanism of the UK-US Security Agreement, a broad intelligence-sharing agreement encompassing a range of intelligence collection methods. [1] Individual spaces in the Doughnut include the 24/7/365 area where people working in "small 12-hour shifts monitor GCHQ systems and news bulletins. The site, where GCHQ started life in Cheltenham … [64], In 2015, documents obtained by The Intercept from US National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that GCHQ had carried out a mass-surveillance operation, codenamed KARMA POLICE, since about 2008. [10][11] In 1919, the Cabinet's Secret Service Committee, chaired by Lord Curzon, recommended that a peacetime codebreaking agency should be created, a task which was given to the Director of Naval Intelligence, Hugh Sinclair. [12] In a review of GCHQ's move in 2003, the National Audit Office said government ministers might never have approved the consolidation of facilities had the final cost been known. A year later there were just under 2,000, still far bigger than the interwar GC&CS. [58], In February 2014, The Guardian, based on documents provided by Snowden, revealed that GCHQ had indiscriminately collected 1.8 million private Yahoo webcam images from users across the world. In 1949 it was decided that GCHQ would move to Cheltenham. [46] GCHQ's Hong Kong operations were extremely important to their relationship with the NSA, who contributed investment and equipment to the station. ", "I spy ... another fiendishly difficult GCHQ puzzle book", "The U.K. Government's GCHQ has issued an official response to the Dalek attack in the Doctor Who New Year Special - no need to panic! David McGuire, 39, was working at the GCHQ spy centre in Cheltenham (pictured) when he flashed a woman for five nights in a row. The new building, which was designed by Gensler and constructed by Carillion, became the base for all of GCHQ's Cheltenham operations. 11603/85 – The Facts", "Hansard: December 1993 Intelligence Services Bill", "The Annual RPI and Average Earnings for Britain, 1209 to Present (New Series)", GCHQ intercepted foreign politicians' communications at G20 summits, "The UK Tempora Program Captures Vast Amounts of Data – and Shares with NSA", "Statement on GCHQ's Alleged Interception of Communications under the US PRISM Programme", "Scale and significance of NSA snooping claims", "Optic Nerve: millions of Yahoo webcam images intercepted by GCHQ", "Snowden Docs: British Spies Used Sex and 'Dirty Tricks, "The Snowden Files: British Spies Used Sex and 'Dirty' Tricks", "The web is a terrorist's command-and-control network of choice", "Tech groups aid terror, says UK spy chief", "Tech giants reject GCHQ boss Robert Hannigan's call for deal with government", Profiled: From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users' Online Identities, UK spy agency GCHQ admits it carries out computer hacking, Sean Spicer just suggested that Obama used British intelligence to spy on Trump. However, in May 1927, during a row over clandestine Soviet support for the General Strike and the distribution of subversive propaganda, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin made details from the decrypts public. "[5] The 'Action On' programme enables the 24/7/365 staff to act "quickly and freely" to supply information to British armed forces to help their operations. [82] The remit of the JTLS has expanded in the ensuing years to cover technical language support and interpreting and translation services across the UK Government and to local public sector services in Gloucestershire and surrounding counties. [26], In early 2018 the building among others was lit up in rainbow colours in support LGBTQ causes. https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/people/aldrich/vigilant/lectures/gchq [1] The courtyard has a memorial to GCHQ staff who have been killed on active service; some five staff died in the War in Afghanistan. Mombasa, Kenya ( 70 ft ) high and 180 metres ( 600 ft ) in.. 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