back to article UK.gov ditches multi-million spooknet project

Multi-million pound plans to upgrade the UK intelligence community’s secure communications system have been shelved in a move heavily criticised by a parliamentary oversight committee. The project to give key government officials speedy access to intelligence on terrorism - dubbed Scope - was abandoned when only partially …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. General A. Annoying

    "unspecified technical obstacles"

    Like;

    "We've spent all the money bailing out Fred the Shred"

  2. RichyS

    Public Sector

    "We also expect the development of any replacement capability to be subject to more stringent controls, and greater management and financial accountability"

    What...? This is the public sector. There never will be any management or financial accountability.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Technical Obstacles

    "...abandoned when only partially completed because of unspecified technical obstacles"

    I wonder if those technical obstacles were anything to do with a security system being developed on Windows???

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    MI5

    Military Intelligence = an oxymoron if ever I heard one.

    Currently working on a project that isn't going as well as it might be - hence the anonymous post (although I'm sure for a fee, someone at el Reg would grass me up, but I just don't care). I do wonder what it will take for someone to finally wake up and do something about the shocking waste of money in all of these failed projects.

    Give me my coat, it's POETS day.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    "Scope"?

    Is that because they're all spazzes?

    Apologies to genuine spastics- being related in any way to these guys is probably really offensive...

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    heh

    unable to setup a vpn but able to get a database that'll intercept all citizens internet communications.

  7. h4rm0ny

    Sooner is better than later?

    Well, I suppose it's better than the UK government's normal approach of throwing endless amounts of money at a project that was already a mistake *cough*NHS IT*cough*. Better still if they hadn't gone down this route to begin with but at least someone has the sense to take the flak for a cock-up rather than pretend everything is fine and waste millions more.

  8. Britt Johnston
    Alien

    wrong end of stick conspiracy

    Yet another project which cost-conscious commentators have misunderstood.

    In times of Financial Crisis, it is important to invest government money in infrastructure and other projects with no short-term payback.

    The method was successfully developed by NASA in the '60s on a hollywood project to film the first moon landing. Most of the proceeds ware leveraged into generating investor confidence. The small hard cash component was diverted towards making teflon frying pans and the like.

    How long have we been in FC, you ask? In Britain, the tank has been running on virtual since stopping industrial production of goods like cars in the '70s, over 40 years ahead of the US. With a good sense of cover-up and misdirection, there is no reason why people shouldn't believe in wealth for a further half century.

  9. amanfromMars Silver badge

    42 Catch 22 ...... Enigma Revisited and Revised

    Spooky nets are not for your usual sort of pen pusher because of the ........ well, the absolute power they can deliver to anyone who knows about their controls. Any you get all the usual spaghetti alphabet suspects engaged in a turf wars to hide what they are doing*,which renders them muppets and puppets to those who would test their vulnerabilities and tempt/offer them virtual, out of this world, left of field solutions and/or novel facilities.

    *A stupid battle as there is No Hiding Place in CyberSpace for Anything ...... Transparency Rules IT Absolutely, which is a Head Game the less than Honest and Forthright have Absolutely no Chance of Winning for Command and Control of Networks InterNetworking.

    Here is a very recent, high profile casualty, who obviously realised the idiots are within the System and have a lot of dirty laundry they don't want showing but have no place to hide it if Networks are Linked ...... http://blog.wired.com/defense/files/ncsc_directors_resignation1.pdf.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Government Priorities?

    It rather suggests where government priorities really lie. Not with genuine security, but more with keeping track of just everyone. Billions for things like ID cards and the like, but only millions for stuff like this. And then they can't even manage to do this stuff.

  11. Stewart Haywood
    Black Helicopters

    Really good security.

    So, they will be able to listen to everyone but will be able to tell nobody about what they hear. That's what I call really good security.

    Black helicopter because I wonder if those work or are they just for decoration?

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Well Bgr me!

    If they can't set up a relatively simple secure network exchanging data that Messers. Blunt, Philby, McClean and mates might have taken an interest in the what hope is there for a successful ID Database and card set up being delivered to spec, never mind on time and in budget. BTW, is there a spec yet??

    It just gets worse! When will the incompetent tossers that populate our Political and Civil Service elite either wake up or sod off, or both. It was no better under the Conservatives and the common denominator here seems to be the Civil Service. Although it might be those tricky "consultants" brought in by all sides.

    On the bright side, however, those who never made a mistake never made anything.....

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    so how about spending

    the leftover budget (remeber it's public money) to bail out a useful project like NPFiT

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.......

    * no, not nuclear war but the sound of every IT recruitment bitch in the land jamming the switchboard of GCHQ....

  15. John Smith Gold badge
    Coat

    Irony alert! Irony alert!

    "We have consistently reported concerns about SCOPE and are *appalled* that Phase II of the system – on which tens of millions of pounds have been spent – has now had to be scrapped"#

    But stil keen as mustard to p*&s away some (unspecified) part of that £12bn+ of the G.I.M.P. on the Uberdatabase.

    Mine is the one with the unusual head gear in the side pocket. And if her Wackiness has her way, yours will be to.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    @General A. Annoying

    re: "We've spent all the money bailing out Fred the Shred"

    "We've spent all the public's pension funds. And then some. Fred is just a diversion."

    There, fixed it for you.

  17. fred base
    Unhappy

    Competetence? We've heard of it.

    Anyone who thinks these clowns have a solution to the financial crisis only need look at their record in IT project management over the last decade.

  18. Graham Marsden
    Boffin

    "unspecified technical obstacles"...

    ... ie someone realised that it simply wouldn't work!

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Bgr Me

    "On the bright side, however, those who never made a mistake never made anything....."

    It's perfectly possible to have a 100% success rate in a career. There are two ways of doing this.

    1. Be brilliant at what you do, though I'm afraid this is an accident of birth.

    2. After you've fleeced the customer, call the people you know from group 1, and get them in to finish it off (i.e. redo it all from scratch in a few weeks,) and repair your mistakes.

    Alas lads, and you know who you are, you've copped it this time. I'm not coming up to Leeds under any circumstances, you should have kept NHSfIT in london.

  20. 4irw4y
    Pirate

    Who wants to spend more for this being in the lack of money?

    "speedy access to intelligence on terrorism - dubbed Scope..." -

    order bases in Moscow, flea market near DK Gorbunova ( House of Culture in Gorbunov's name), known countrywide as "Gor'bushka". Hardly more than $50-60K plus extra fee for weekly updates. Everything for your success.

    73

  21. amanfromMars Silver badge
    Coat

    MkUltraSensitive Compartments ..... for Citizen First Class CyberSpace Travel.

    4irw4y,

    Does Moscow have a Service which Provides Virtual Peace Intelligence which IT can XXXXPort Freely and make AIMInt? You surely know someone whom you don't really know would be more than just interested in ITs Provisional Facilities ..... and Virtual Virile Marketing in Mutually Beneficial Globally Adventurous Guerrilla Campaigns of NeuReal Knowledge Distribution.

  22. RW
    Happy

    @ AC posted 6th March 2009 17:32 GMT

    You beat me to the punch, but let me suggest sloganizing your observation:

    "Billions to spy on one's own people, but not a million to spy on one's enemies."

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @What a bunch of spazos

    I think you will find it is SCOPE.

  24. John Smith Gold badge
    Joke

    @AC for serveral place

    "those who never made a mistake never made anything" should read

    "those who never made a mistake never made a decision"

    You've read the career planning advice to senior civil servants then?

  25. 4irw4y
    Coat

    Rich Shooters Are Invited

    A number of Teams Special of Peaceful Intelligence, acting worldwide simultaneously and doubtlessly, will really be just next to nothing, amanfromMars, though, this msg is supposed to be just another move to let the stupid men from the block enjoy the beauty of the spoken language once more.

    Some photos from North-Eastern Massacre, Moscow, might have been made one possibly sure that there are national forces to run the operation. But there are not only banks, ammos and baby food producers, interests of state/mafia circles, there is a branch of Homos, sometimes aka Sapiens ["I'm all yours, just don't take my smth. away from me" - one surely must have nothing valuable at all to find the ability to keep the tail a pistol]. The personal decreasing of level of sadness is all what some folks [not represented here] can ask GOD about. What a pity they never had a chance to get to know themselves better.

    And, by now, any field operation of any [Peace - I stress it] Intelligence would only pull a dead cow just an extra mile South... Of course, El Reg will surely know about the better moves if th у specials will capture an excavator to bury the body and face North. But the cow's corpse is yet kicked to and fro through all Europe. US are off the count, cows cannot overpass such distances C-w4ys.

    The question is put this way now, wherever one likes it or not, and there must be a way out, and it's possibly resting on the surface. I never ask pessimists to discuss matters of intelligence, though amfM knows well how dumb someone may be (-;

    The latest bullet was made from silver - hell, maybe there was any golden shot? Need 2 Feed my neighbour's family... they're 2 young 2 die 2day, 2morrow 2.

  26. ElFatbob

    @ General A

    lol, sounds just about spot on.

    Perhaps some cost savings could be found by, say, outsourcing to India?

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like