GCHQ to lure youth spooks by advertising in online games

ONE OF Her Majesty's secret services will start placing recruitment advertisements in online video games.

The Government Communications Head Quarters (GCHQ) service is the UK government's electronic intelligence gathering organisation, Brittania's version of the US National Security Agency (NSA) or, in other words, a very secretive high technology spook shop.

The GCHQ's adverts will be shown as billboards in the virtual world backgrounds of games such as "Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent."

GCHQ's move is just the latest in a transition by the UK intelligence services' away from traditional quiet recruitment in university settings toward using open advertising to attract new recruits. Earlier this year the UK's internal security service MI5 started advertising for applicants on the sides of London buses.

The agency is looking for fresh recruits who are "computer-savvy, technologically able, quick thinking," a spokeswoman told the Times. It hopes to attract game players early, to "plant the idea in the minds of younger players" of joining the secret services.

Most of GCHQ's staff are software technologists and intelligence analysts working on the interception, decryption and analysis of telephonic and Internet communications, mainly working at the agency's central listening operation at Cheltenham in Gloucestershire. µ

L'INQ
The Guardian
GCHQ