Slashdot Mirror
Britain's MI6 Opens Its First Website
An anonymous reader wites "Britain's spy agency the Secret Intelligence Service, known popularly as MI6, has opened its first website. While much about the agency is still not public, the website has information on service history and career opportunities for would-be spies. This rare peek at the real group popularized by the James Bond series brought over 3.5 million visits in its first few opening hours on Wednesday."
NOW!
Their first web site that we know about.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
Old news... it's a good thing that our submitters aren't in the intel business! Or.... are they?
Who wants to set up the betting pool on this?
I bet the gambling websites would make a killing.
I got $20 that says it gets wacked in under a week.
Of course starting them out with a nice slashdotting probably doesn't help. heh
No unauthorized use. Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
Boy, the intelligence at this website increases with age...
Better than the FBI's or CIA :(
Kinda takes the "Secret" part right out of their title. :-)
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
Slow news day?
this was news two weeks ago.
More than just English? I'll bet MI6 is dying for some Chinese recruits apparently.
Best bit of the website has to be the operational careers profiles, http://www.mi6.gov.uk/output/Page74.html
James Bond, 42
"I love women and martinins so the 'SIS' flexible work hours suit me perfectly."
And worse: he is Blonde. "My name is Blond, James Blond"
So, is the website run by Q? If so, I must say that I'm a little disappointed that my computer doesn't explode when I click on the page three times.
From the FAQ:
When I was young "nerd" news were read on magazines. We must wait one month, but usually two or three to get some news of an event.
Now anything older than 1 or 2 days seems old news.
If a history is old 5 days after it arrises, may be that history isn't as important as to mention it. After a century of existence MI6 opens a web, and 5 days later isn't it interesting?
Internet is a great site to read news, but makes people very impatient.
My city: Barcelona.
Having given the website a quick look, I'm pretty pleased with how it's turned out. The layout's clear and understandable, it's got a few images but not too many to be especially taxing, and it has some nice features - switching the globe from night to day is cool, and implemented without using Flash, hurrah! On the whole, not bad.
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
But they have a pretty good recipe for a Vodka Martini. The Kilgour suit is optional.
What is music when you despise all sound?
Recently Jennifer Garner did a recruiting commercial for the CIA. When I saw it, my first reaction was, "how do I know you're recruiting for the CIA and not for some other organization posing as the CIA?"
Click here. :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
(I'm digging about for a CMS system that has some controls over content (approval, etc), is open source licensed, and outputs static content (ie: I don't want cgi generating every page view on the fly). This MI6/SIS site looks like it might be using something like that. Thoughts?)
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Like bombing the Underground?
Illegal narcotics: Likewise, the CIA and M16 are great at stopping illegal narcotics, they're so good that the street price has been dropping steadily.
Judging by the lack of factual objectivity in your post, and your knowledge on the street prices of narcotics, I think now would be a good time for you to check-in to a rehab facility?
I wonder why they use the domain name mi6.gov.uk when they make such a big deal of their REAL name being SIS, with Mi6 being mostly a movie thing
see http://www.mi6.gov.uk/output/Page50.html
This rare peek at the real group popularized by the James Bond series brought over 3.5 million visits in its first few opening hours on Wednesday.
:)
Sounds to me as if this is a dupe, and its already been slashdotted
Officially: "No comments"
...that long to get on slashdot!!! And this is the Internet age.. huh...
Where's my free iPod!? Until then, I'll settle for a kiss...
Hackers army
(Courtesy of Bilo and Nano )
For those interested in television that portrays the SIS in a reasonably accurate light, I highly recommend the Sandbagger series. Available on DVD too.
Here's the Arabic version of the official website of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) also known as MI6:
url=http://www.mi6.gov.uk/output/Page81.html
How realistic is the depiction of SIS in the James Bond films?
James Bond, as Ian Fleming originally conceived him was based on reality. But any author needs to inject a level of glamour and excitement beyond reality in order to sell. By the time the filmmakers focused on Bond the gap between truth and fiction had already widened. Nevertheless, staff who join SIS can look forward to a career that will have moments when the gap narrows just a little and the certainty of a stimulating and rewarding career which, like Bond's, will be in the service of their country.
After all it has the World Factbook. Probably the best resource I've ever seen for getting basic information on countries. For every country it has a map, gorgraphic and demographic information, information on the government, the military, communications, etc. If you hear a country mentioned, it's a great place to go to get basic background on that country. One would assume it's fairly accurate as well.
Whilst I can't comment about Ian Fleming being "fired from spy school", which sounds like a good yarn, I do know that Fleming served for some considerable time in the British Intelligence Service during WWII and held (as Bond did) the rank of Commander RN.
Flemings experience of black ops in wartime directly influenced his concept of what an intelligence agent gets up to and his role in thinking up such ops exposed him to the "funny" sort of kit dreamed up by Q in the Bond books.
Another connection with Bond is that Fleming had a considerable reputation as a womaniser.
Suitability: Nationality and Security Clearance The sensitive nature of the work SIS undertakes means that candidates for SIS must be British, with at least one parent who is a British national. A candidate must normally have lived in the UK for at least 5 of the last 10 years and will have to pass an extensive security clearance process prior to joining.
Oh. Dear.
(from the SIS FAQ)
I want to know who thought it would be a good idea to have the main page be "/output/Page79.html"
:)
I see the other pages are 47, 53, 55, 65, 57....
This is definitely a website built to governemt spec. Good job boys!
It seems stranges this came out about the same time as the new Bond actor was announced.
Wikipedia knows it all, here is a list of the worlds intelligence agencies, that is, those we know about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_intelligence_ agencies
whois mi6.gov.uk
Domain:
mi6.gov.uk
Registered For:
Secret Intelligence Service
ns0.qinetiq-tim.net
Entry created:
Friday 15th July 2005
Luxury...
If my company was responsible for any one of the massive fuckups which the intelligence agencies serve up on a regular basis we'd be out of business permanently. Some of the mistakes they make are remedial, like basing 'confident' WMD reports on the testimony of a few individuals who had a clear interest in having the US invade Iraq. And yet we're still paying for them to come up with more 'intelligence', and passing whatever fucked-up laws they ask for so they can gather more data - even though they are incapable of using the enormous amount of data they already have. Where's the hard evidence that it's worth the money? Who audits them and where do we see the results? Oh sorry - it's top secret.
How can I offer intelligence to SIS?
If you are in the UK and believe that you have intelligence of importance to SIS or Her Majesty's Government you may write to SIS at PO Box 1300, London SE1 1BD.
http://www.mi6.gov.uk/output/Page79.html
ha ha
So, now its official. James Bond is a SISsy.....
Unfortunately, no James.
The language choices are interesting: English, Spanish, Russian, French, Arabic, and Chinese. My guess as to the reasons: English because it's Britain, Spanish because it's spoken by the non-anglophone Americas, Russian because the USSR was the Cold War enemy, French because it was the international language of diplomacy, Arabic because it's the language of the Middle East (the major intelligence interest today), and Chinese because it's the most common language per capita.
Notable omissions are other European languages and Japanese. Arabic is a very notable inclusion.
I beg to differ
http://cryptome.org/mi6-list4.htm
What? No Daniel Craig pictures?
This is quite an interesting assortment of languages they support there (page bottom I mean): Spanish, Russian, French, Arabic, Chinese, and English.
;)
Which other page is that international
Je me souviens.
This is a really great site, though I sorta hoped that when I went there I would have seen this.
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
Thr British Reconnaissance Office, (BRO) has no website.
--- If you could save time in a bottle, would it have an expiration date?
I guess that's the famous British politeness shining though.
... but then I'd have to kill you.
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
Their html page naming convention and hierarchy organisation are as mysterious and secretive as their operations . . .
Running nmap I detected that the Site might be running on an Microsoft Xbox running Debian Linux 2.4.20 (90%), here is the complet result, and *yes* they have only port 80/tcp open, just in case -:) Starting nmap 3.70 ( http://www.insecure.org/nmap/ ) at 2005-10-16 21:34 CDT Warning: OS detection will be MUCH less reliable because we did not find at least 1 open and 1 closed TCP port Interesting ports on www.mi6.gov.uk (194.61.189.14): (The 1659 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: filtered) PORT STATE SERVICE 80/tcp open http Device type: general purpose|broadband router|router Running (JUST GUESSING) : Linux 2.4.X|2.6.X|2.5.X (95%), Siemens embedded (90%), Conexant embedded (89%), Draytek embedded (89%), FreeSCO Linux 2.0.X (89%) Aggressive OS guesses: Linux 2.4.16 - 2.4.18 (95%), Linux 2.4.18 - 2.4.20 (x86) (95%), Linux 2.6.0-test5 x86 (95%), Siemens Speedstream 2602 DSL/Cable router (90%), Microsoft Xbox running Debian Linux 2.4.20 (90%), Conexant ADSL Router (89%), Draytek Vigor 2200e DSL router v2.1b (89%), FreeSCO 0.27 (Linux 2.0.38) (89%), Linux 2.2.16 (89%), Linux 2.4.18 (x86) (89%) No exact OS matches for host (test conditions non-ideal). Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 68.875 seconds
not clear to me. mi6 seems to be intelligence but so does mi5. what gives?
It's good to see that they're sticking to the apparent official font of Britain, Gill Sans.
Think Indian, Pakistan, Mixed(*), Black Carribean(**), Black African(**) and Bangladeshi and you'll get to about 83% of Britain's ethnic minorities. Only then will you get to any of the listed languages, Chinese, who make up about 5%.
f acts/index39.aspx
B concurs - Russian, Arabic and Chinese just don't feature strongly. Spanish isn't even listed, and French is only mentioned because it is the first language in the Channel Islands which are part of the UK.
* Yeah, we don't know about the 15% who are classified as 'mixed'. It's probably safe to assume that that they are predominantly white mixed with all of the above minorities in approximate proportion to the percentage that each particular minority comprises.
** Black Carribean and Black African doesn't say anything about language. French, Dutch and Spanish probably all feature to some degree.
Source: http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/
An even better resource would be the Ethnologue. http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=G
The reason for the choice is purely to cover as much of the World's educated population as possible. Nearly everyone in Europe reads English, French, or Spanish with a good degree of competancy. Any educated Indian reads English. Ditto for former Soviet states with Russian. Educated Africans according to previous colonial powers. Ditto South America and much of Southeast Asia. Japanese will read English due to the legacy of post WWII reconstruction. Australasia use English as their first language. That leaves China and the Middle East as the two big population centers that aren't well covered by the previous languages.
Uh, you can read the report here. It's not exactly hidden. Sure, this is the unclassified version, but I've read it and it's fairly comprehensive for an unclass document.
Security person: "We'll have to do background checks on you going back to the UK".
Friend: "That's OK, I have full positive vetting from the British security services."
Security person: Silence then "Shit, that's going to be a problem. All those guys are commie faggots"
In the end he did get clearance. Or he may not have done. People in that sort of business, you never know when they are telling the truth.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
It'd just be an embarrassment, not an actual security risk.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
This has been avaliable for a while http://www.unit.org.uk/
[Int shot of Scorpio's secret lair. Agent 007 is tied down to the top of several servers.] /.]
Bond: Scorpio! Do you expect me to talk
Scorpio: No, Mr Bond. I expect you to die.
[Close up of Scorpio posting the server's http onto
Scorpio: MUWHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
They must be elite. /national_secrets".
Found nothing on google for "index of
Defining Statistics and Social Research
While MI5's Myths/FAQ section explicitly states that MI5 does not assassinate people, the question is not present in MI6's FAQs. (Incidentally, I personally don't believe that MI6 assassinates people, but I wonder if they deliberately left the question out).
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
And we should be deeply thankful that they are.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Having looked at both the sites (mi6 and sis) via the /. links, all I saw was "JavaScript Currently Forbidden (1 Script)"
Not a particularly good advert to attract the paranoiacs & psychopaths amongst Her Majesty's loyal subjects.
Posted in the UK, hence the AC
Terrorism: Ah, the catch all for someone who's doing something we don't like.
Like bombing the Underground?
No, like these people, or the Birmingham 6
Illegal narcotics: Likewise, the CIA and M16 are great at stopping illegal narcotics, they're so good that the street price has been dropping steadily.
Judging by the lack of factual objectivity in your post, and your knowledge on the street prices of narcotics, I think now would be a good time for you to check-in to a rehab facility?
Well, I didn't expect complete Idiots... lets ask the BBC again.
Everyone's heard of MI5 and MI6, so nobody bothers to ask where 1-4 went.
Becasue those languages are the most common in England?
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
see netcraft.com
...according to Netcraft they're running Apache-AdvancedExtranetServer under Linux. Of course they're also probably bluffing ;)