There are two stories. The first story, and the most covered, is directly about the immense contribution Bletchley made to the achievement of victory and to the significant shortening of WWII. That story in its own right is both completely absorbing and vital to understanding key parts of WWII. The second story is perhaps even more essential reading. Welchman was heavily involved in the development of technology that made the digital age possible. Bletchley Park is the true home of the electronic digital information processor. Without that work, there might be no Internet and we could still be living in an analogue world where almost everything we take for granted today would not exist. This book should be essential reading in schools and be read widely. It provides insights that should show how further advances can be made and how security can be developed to protect the users of electronic information. Currently few understand the threats that come with the enormous benefits and because of that, developers and politicians continue to fail miserably in providing the benefits at an acceptable level of risk.
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NAME: Gordon Welchman, Bletchley Park's Architect of Ultra Intelligence CATEGORY: Book Reviews DATE: 180514 FILE: R1973 AUTHOR: Joel Greenberg PUBLISHER: Pen & Sword BINDING: hard back PAGES: 286 PRICE: £25.00 GENRE: Non Fiction SUBJECT: WWII, World War Two, Second World War, 1939-1945, SIGINT, communications interception, cribs, ULTRA, code breaking, encryption, decryption, bombe, Colossus, Enigma, deception, misinformation, Station X, Y stations, Polish intelligence, signal traffic, traffic analysis, pattern analysis, threat analysis, Lorenz ISBN: 1-84832-752-8 IMAGE: B1973.jpg BUYNOW: http://tinyurl.comps3cujt LINKS: DESCRIPTION: The stories of the signal intelligence war were slow to be told because the Cold War made its continuation critical. Britain had developed a very strong lead in this area with the work of the Admiralty before and during WWI to recognize and exploit signal intelligence. As many of the techniques continue to be employed in an age of cyber warfare, there will continue to be significant gaps in published information on the people, the equipment and techniques first developed at Bletchley Park and its outstations. Essentially the organization generally known as GCHQ operates in the manner of Bletchley Park and its supporting organizations. It is a story of two parts. One the one hand, there is an organization that creates codes and cyphers for British use, continuously tests those products for vulnerability and effectiveness, and attempts to identify and break codes and cyphers produced by other countries. As the convergence of information and communications systems continues, the dividing line between potential and actual enemies and the rest of the global user population blurs and creates many new challenges, but in 1939 there was a clear enemy. Matching the code writers and breakers, signal intelligence requires the development of equipment and techniques to collect and then analyse enemy communications. By volume, this usually sees radio signals as the primary source of information and the Germans helped Bletchley Park by extensively using radio communication and relying on what the Germans believed was the completely unbreakable code produced by the Enigma machine. Although Enigma was very difficult to break, Bletchley Park was fortunate to benefit from the acquisition of Enigma machines by the Polish intelligence service that then shared the knowledge with British code breakers. As long as the Germans relied on the basic Enigma technology, British intelligence had an advantage. Enigma would be subject to development and changes, but this only created short gaps while Bletchley Park identified the changes and improved their technology to again break the code. The Germans had not learned one essential lesson from WWI. Any radio signals can be intercepted and the first vital intelligence is 'chatter'. As before the Battle of Jutland, the Royal Navy was able to intercept High Seas Fleet radio traffic and the increases in volume gave first warning that the German Imperial Navy was preparing to sail. Even without decoding any encrypted traffic, the RN would see how many vessels were to be involved and, from radio direction finding by triangulation, the locations of the vessels could be mapped. That continued to hold true and is still a vital part of modern signal intelligence. It also provided the means to start to break enemy code. By transmitting a specially designed signal, the enemy reaction to intercepting that signal provides clues to the code that they are using This may involve transmitting a signal that has not been encrypted to assist the enemy in gaining intelligence and then taking steps to act on that false information. So far, only fragmentary information has emerged from those involved in operations at Bletchley. Alan Turing has achieved posthumous fame, but he was one of many brilliant individuals who were intimately involved in the story. Some, including Welchman, wrote books and papers after 1945 which provided insights into their work, but GCHQ and the US NASA acted quickly to block further publications and to prevent published authors from making further comments. The author, a Bletchley Park historian, has drawn on Welshman's papers in an attempt to put the record straight. The result is an absorbing book that is packed with fresh insights, although it is not a complete account, with some related information still protected by security classification and restriction and unlikely to be declassified for many years yet. There are two stories. The first story, and the most covered, is directly about the immense contribution Bletchley made to the achievement of victory and to the significant shortening of WWII. That story in its own right is both completely absorbing and vital to understanding key parts of WWII. The second story is perhaps even more essential reading. Welchman was heavily involved in the development of technology that made the digital age possible. Bletchley Park is the true home of the electronic digital information processor. Without that work, there might be no Internet and we could still be living in an analogue world where almost everything we take for granted today would not exist. This book should be essential reading in schools and be read widely. It provides insights that should show how further advances can be made and how security can be developed to protect the users of electronic information. Currently few understand the threats that come with the enormous benefits and because of that, developers and politicians continue to fail miserably in providing the benefits at an acceptable level of risk.