Maximator is a reminder that the Five Eyes—an intelligence pact between America, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand—is not the only game in town
Swede, a German and a Dutchman walk into a bar. It is 1979 and spooks from the four countries are conferring in a Munich suburb over dark and malty lagers. For years they had co-operated in the business of signals intelligence, or—intercepting messages and cracking codes—and wanted a name for their budding spy pact. “They looked at their glasses, filled with Doppelbock beer of the local brand Maximator,” writes Bart Jacobs, a Dutch computer-science professor, “and reached a decision.
In a paper published last month, Mr Jacobs revealed the existence of the Maximator alliance for the first time. It was formed in 1976, when Denmark joined forces with Germany and Sweden to intercept and decipher messages sent by satellites. The Netherlands joined two years later, bringing its intercept stations in the Caribbean to the party. France came along in 1985. The group is alive and well today.
Maximator’s history is a fine illustration of the chicanery involved in good cryptology. As well as plucking signals out of the ether, the group would swap details of weaknesses in cipher machines which encrypted diplomatic and military messages. How did they know of those weaknesses? Cryptoand its German counterpart, thecountries. Without letting on how it knew, Germany slipped information about those machines’ flaws to its Maximator partners.
The revelation of Maximator is a reminder that the Five Eyes—a globe-girdling intelligence pact between America, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand—is not the only game in town. Other eavesdropping alliances have coalesced around common goals, like the war in Afghanistan. For instance, the Fourteen Eyes, officially known asSeniors Europe, brings together the countries in Five Eyes and Maximator, along with Spain, Norway, Belgium and Italy.
Nevertheless, Maximator is staunchly European, something that carries certain advantages as transatlantic divisions grow wider. “German and French engineers work very well together,” notes Bernard Barbier, a former head offor French intelligence, who once proposed a fused Franco-German spy agency. “In contrast,” he laments, “a British engineer with a French engineer is complicated.
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