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."
Slow news day?
Well in defense of the FBI & CIA, both of their sites provide a lot more information. The SIS site provides minimal information so its easier to keep it clean. Regardless, the SIS site is not as cool as the NSA's :) (In particular the flash based one, its one of the few flash sites that are done well).
Regards,
Steve
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.
Maybe its because MI6.gov.uk really isnt their main site, just a simple redirect. http://www.sis.gov.uk/ Is actually their homepage.
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.
Those are also the 6 official languages of the United Nations. Maybe that is the reason?