Global articles on espionage, spying, bugs, and other interesting topics.

Staff shortage harms UK spying sector

The Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee, which consists of lawmakers who are tasked with monitoring British spying apparatus, said in a report that the UK intelligence is suffering a steady loss of Internet experts to the private sector because the likes of Google and Microsoft offer much higher wages, British media reported.

The Committee expressed concern that a cut in real terms of 11 percent in funding over the next four years for its three main agencies could harm their work, said the report.

The head of the signals intercept agency, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), has told the committee that “his organisation was losing whizzes, or very able performers, to better-paying employers”, according to the annual report.

“I need some real internet whizzes in order to do cyber and I am not even sure they are even on the contractor market, so I need to work on that. They will be working for Microsoft or Google or Amazon or whoever,” said the director, Iain Lobban.

“And I can’t compete with their salaries; I can offer them a fantastic mission, but I can’t compete with their salaries. But I probably have to do better than I am doing at the moment, or else my internet whizzes are not going to stay … and we do have a steady drip, I am afraid.

“Month-on-month, we are losing whizzes who’ll basically say: ‘I’m sorry, I am going to take three times the salary and the car and whatever else’,” added Lobban.

Inflation has had an inevitable impact on the spying agencies’ budget, which are faced with an 11.3 percent reduction in budget in real terms over a four-year period.

This “will inevitably have an impact on the ability of all three Agencies to maintain current levels of coverage of all aspects of the threat, and that this may worsen if inflation remains at its current levels. This will require tough decisions in the coming years”, said the committee’s report.