Were the Spooks at MI6 the Secret Intelligence Service's distinctive HQ building at Vauxhall Cross on the River Thames in London having a rooftop barbeque, or incinerating files or just polluting the atmosphere ?
MI6 Secret Intelligence Service HQ Vauxhall Cross - no smoke without fire ?
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About this blog
This blog is discusses and analyses the new book Spook Country by cyberpunk author William Gibson, published in August 2007.
This will be primarily from a United Kingdom perspective, as some of the themes of espionage and surveillance and hidden forces really do resonate in our endemic Surveillance Society.
This blog has been described, quite fairly, as "otaku-worthy immersion"
Email Contact
email: blog @ SpookCountry [dot] co [dot] uk
Here is our PGP public encryption key or download it via a PGP Keyserver.
Hints and Tips for Whistleblowers
Please take the appropriate precautions if you are planning to blow the whistle on shadowy and powerful people in Government or commerce, and their dubious policies. The mainstream media and bloggers also need to take simple precautions to help preserve the anonymity of their sources e.g.
- Spy Blog's Hints and Tips for Whistleblowers
- Digital Security and Privacy for Human Rights Defenders manual by Front Line.
- Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents - March 2008 version - (2.2 Mb - 80 pages .pdf) by Reporters Without Borders
- A Practical Security Handbook for Activists and Campaigns (v 2.6)(v 2.6) (.doc - 62 pages ), by experienced UK direct action political activists
Spook Country Links
William Gibson Books discussion bulletin board Spook Country *NO SPOILERS* forum
William Gibson Books discussion bulletin board Spook Country - *SPOILERS OK* forum
William Gibson video about "Spook Country" on YouTube and on the official website.
William Gibson Links
William Gibson blog - written by the author himself, on which he has test marketed fragments of his novel Spook Country whilst writing it.
William Gibson Books discussion bulletin board
www.williamgibson.de - William Gibson book promtion website in Germany
William Gibson aleph - lots of resources about William Gibson's works.
The Cyberpunk Project - some online texts of some of William Gibson's writings hosted in Russia.
Wikipedia Links
Wikipedia entry for "Spook Country"
Wikipedia "Spook Country" page edit history RSS feed or Atom feed
The character "Hubertus Bigend" has his own fictional Wikipedia entry in "Spook Country", which has now become now a real one.
Node Magazine
- Node Magazine - a fictional magazine which "seems to be actively preventing the kind of buzz that magazines normally cultivate before they begin to exist" mentioned in the hints given about the Spook Country book, which has already been created online by a fan (patternboy), before the book has been published.
- node.tumblr.com - Node Magazine is publishing 2 Chapter Summaries and Quotations each day in the 42 day countdown to the official publication of Spook Country
- Spook Country blog's "cloud of hyperlinks" in numerical chapter order - commentary and annotations on the node.tumblr.com annotations to Spook Country.
Fictional British TV Spooks
Stylish, if somewhat far fetched, BBC TV drama based on MI5 the Security Service - Spooks
BBC children's TV series M.I.High
2008 spin off TV series from Spooks [spooks] code 9 , set a few years into the future in 2013, in the Orwellian Police State which has emerged after a nuclear bomb attack on London.
Fictional Spooks
The Spy Wise Blog by Wesley Britton
Real Spooks
MI5 - the Security Service - counter-espionage, counter-terrorism, domestic surveilance
GCHQ - the Government Communications Head Quarters - intercepting and deciphering enemy communications, and protecting UK ones.
MI6 - SIS - the Secret Intelligence Service - mostly foreign intelligence - not quite like depicted in James Bond films.
Ex - Spooks
RichardTomlinson.org - Richard Tomlinson - still being harassed by his former employer MI6. There are also links to Cryptome's archives of articles and alleged, unproven, lists of names of former or mcurrent MI6 agents (including, improbably, some UK Ambassadors), which caused lots of controversy. Tomlinson denies publishing anything not already in the public domain.
Martin Ingram, Welcome To The Dark Side - former British Army Intelligence operative in Northern Ireland.
Operation Billiards - Mitrokhin or Oshchenko ? Michael John Smith - seeking to overturn his Official Secrets Act conviction in the GEC case.
The Dirty Secrets of MI5 & MI6 - Tony Holland, Michael John Smith and John Symond - stories and chronologies.
Naked Spygirl - Olivia Frank
Spooky Info
Cryptome.org - including various spooky documents which some Government agencies would prefer not to be online.
Alan Turnbull's www.secret-bases.co.uk - "An entertaining guide to using Internet-based research tools – Ordnance Survey's maps, Getmapping's aerial photos and Google Earth! to reveal the UK's "hidden" MoD facilities and military sites"
Eye Spy Magazine - " The world's leading newsstand magazine on intelligence and espionage" - photos, articles, book reviews, private sector surveillance equipment and services adverts etc. N.B. Sometimes uncritical articles on various anti-terrorism and espionage topics, presumably in order to keep in favour with their anonymous sources.
Historical Spooks
Science Museum, London - Science of Spying Exhibition - for Spy Kids of all ages until September 2007.
Bletchley Park - "Historic site of secret British codebreaking activities during WWII and birthplace of the modern computer."
Imperial War Museum. London
Spooky CyberPunks and CyberGoths
The Dose is a "free, downloadable PDF zine ranging from industrial and gothic music to indie game development, Japanese visual kei, eyecandy, cyberpunkness" produced in Hungary.The three (so far annual) issues so far, with another promised in July 2007 contain plenty of CyberPunk and CyberGoth images and reviews, with the occasional reference back to William Gibson or other cyberpunk fiction authors.
Spy / Surveillance Art Projects
Spy Box - "A digital camera inside a parcel looks out through a small hole and captures images of its journey through the postal system. The Spy Box was sent from my studio to the gallery taking an image every 10 seconds recording a total of 6994 images these were then edited together to create an animated slideshow." - by artist Tim Knowles
Benjamin Males - "Face Targeting and Analysis System (2008) - Software designed to find and analyse faces in a video stream. First stage in an ongoing project looking at the potential misuse of technology"
London CyberPunk Tourist Guide
As part of the preparations for William Gibson book signing and lecture event promoting Spook Country in London, during August 2007, this "local knowledge" guide to places of interest to cyberpunk fans was compiled, and has been subsequently expanded.
London CyberPunk Tourist Guide - http://CyberPunk.org.uk
Please feel free to add comments or send emails, to keep it up to date.
Zero History
Zero History blog - ZeroHistory.net - discussion and hyper link cloud enhanced literary criticism of William Gibson's forthcoming novel, entitled Zero History, which is due to be published on 7th September 2010.
See the Fragments of a Hologram Bill thread on the William Gibson Books discussion forum for the snippets of writing which have been released for discussion to the public so far.
Search
Zero History
Zero History blog - ZeroHistory.net - discussion and hyper link cloud enhanced literary criticism of William Gibson's forthcoming novel, entitled Zero History, which is due to be published on 7th September 2010.
See the Fragments of a Hologram Bill thread on the William Gibson Books discussion forum for the snippets of writing which have been released for discussion to the public so far.
Cover Artwork
US cover art (the design we prefer):
UK cover art:
See how the cover artwork designs have changed slightly over time in the Cover Artwork category archive
"Spook Country" hyperlink cloud annotation
Our "Spook Country" hyperlink cloud annotation - re-orderd into numerical Chapter sequence
The Node Magazine node.tumblr.com, which this was a collaborative online contribution to, was online even before the official publication date of the first hardback edition of the book in August 2007.
This has been commented on by the author William Gibson, and described by Emeritus Professor of English Literature John Sutherland as "the future of literary crticism"
Recent Entries
- Polish paperback edition of Spook Country cover artwork
- Doctor Who: Victory of the Daleks - and of USA spelling ?
- Torchwood Children Of Earth - MI5 Thames House and the Government Car and Despatch Agency
- More Cuban Intelligence Service espionage tradecraft - the Ana Belen Montes case
- Alleged Cuban spies in the USA - Walter Kendall Myers and Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers
- Ada Lovelace - Blue Plaque - 12 St. James's Square, London
- Ada Lovelace Day
- Some photos of Cory Doctorow signing Little Brother at Forbidden Planet, London
- Cory Doctorow - UK edition of Little Brother - signing @ Forbidden Planet, London, Saturday 29th November 2008
- BBC Spooks series 7 - good atmosphere and style, but utterly implausible technology
Campaign Buttons
Campaign for the Freedom of Information
Free Gary McKinnon, who lives in London, is accused of hacking in to over 90 US military computer systems, and is facing extradition to the USA under the controversial Extradition Act 2003, without any prima facie evidence or charges brought against him in a UK court. Try him here in the UK, under UK law.
FreeFarid.com- - Kafkaesque extradition of Farid Hilali under the European Arrest Warrant to Spain
Spy Blog - UK Public CCTV Surveillance Regulation Campaign
NO2ID Campaign - cross party opposition to the NuLabour Compulsory Biometric ID Card and National Identity Register centralised database.
Parliament Protest blog - resistance to the Designated Area restricting peaceful demonstrations or lobbying in the vicinity of Parliament.
Data Retention is No Solution
Petition to the European Commission and European Parliament against their vague Data Retention plans.
Tor - the onion routing network - "Tor aims to defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal anonymity and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security. Communications are bounced around a distributed network of servers called onion routers, protecting you from websites that build profiles of your interests, local eavesdroppers that read your data or learn what sites you visit, and even the onion routers themselves." The WikiLeakS.org project makes use of Tor as part of their anonymity infrastructure.
BlogSafer - wiki with multilingual guides to anonymous blogging
NGO in a box - Security Edition privacy and security software tools
Reporters Without Borders - Reporters Sans Frontières - campaign for journalists 'and bloggers' freedom in repressive countries and war zones.
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Monthly Archives
- November 2010 (1)
- April 2010 (1)
- July 2009 (1)
- June 2009 (2)
- March 2009 (2)
- December 2008 (1)
- November 2008 (2)
- October 2008 (1)
- September 2008 (1)
- August 2008 (5)
- May 2008 (2)
- April 2008 (3)
- March 2008 (1)
- November 2007 (2)
- October 2007 (3)
- September 2007 (3)
- August 2007 (110)
- July 2007 (47)
- June 2007 (11)
- May 2007 (3)
- April 2007 (2)
- March 2007 (2)
- February 2007 (4)
Categories
- "Spook Country" hyperlink cloud annotations (84)
- Blog discussions (2)
- Cover Artwork (14)
- English Literature (2)
- Interviews with William Gibson (10)
- John le Carré (1)
- London CyberPunk tourist guide (2)
- Node magazine - Chapter summaries and Quotations (48)
- Other book promotions (8)
- Pre-publication (teaser / spoiler) reviews (48)
- Pre-publication reviews (little or no teaser / spoiler info) (4)
- Publisher's Blurb (3)
- Spooks (13)
- Themes (2)
- Tradecraft (1)
- UK book promotions (14)
- UK mainstream media reviews (4)
- UK Television (1)
- Video (2)
Tag Cloud
- Cover Artwork
- Spook Country
- Spooks Code 9
- BBC Spooks
- Cory Doctorow
- Forbidden Planet
- Little Brother
- Ada Lovelace Day
- Ana Belen Montes
- BBC Torchwood
- Cuba
- Cuban Intelligence Service
- Espionage Tradecraft Techniques
- FBI
- GCDA
- Government Car and Despatch Agency
- hyperlink cloud
- Ian Fleming
- Imperial War Museum
- James Bond 007