Surely even Cash Gordon must know the risk he is putting the United Kingdom under by not ensuring adequate protection of sensitive military sites. !

Jim Ferguson

By Gordon Thomas

LONDON – British security chief Jonathan Evans, head of MI5, has warned the Brown government that the country’s most sensitive military and security bases have been “seriously damaged by Google’s Street View.”

Agents with MI5 are satisfied that thousands of images have been downloaded by U.K.-based Muslims, suspected associates of al-Qaida. The images show close-ups of Britain’s atomic weapons research center and the nation’s doughnut-shaped eavesdropping center at Cheltenham.

MI5 has found its buildings across Britain included in the “Street View” service.

Google has been warned that placing any of the images on its website contravenes the Official Secrets Act. The penalty of any breach can carry lengthy prison sentences under British law.

“This week Google has removed most of the images. But the damage has been done. The images are now in the hands of suspect terrorists,” Evans has told the government.

One site is at Menwith Hill, in the north of England near Harrogate. Its giant “golf balls” are linked to satellites and are clearly visible. The image shows the access roads to the “golf balls.” The U.K. shares the base with America’s National Security Agency.

The golf ball shapes are the very core of the base’s role as a global eavesdropper. Known as radomes, each shape is positioned on a carefully aligned course known as the “Runway,” which allows them to intercept messages from communications from space.

Coated in toughened Teflon to shed the rain that constantly develops across the North Sea, the “golf balls” are each equipped with computers which interdict the networks as they bounce their messages around the world.

Another image that would be of “high value to a terrorist group is the Hanslope Park base near Milton Keynes, where MI6 officers analyze data from GCHQ,” said an intelligence source.

One of the most guarded entrances in London – Thames House, the headquarters of MI5, clearly is pinpointed.

“Until recently the Google Map published information only on major British cities, [giving] no more than a broadspan view of the area. Now it has clear images of almost every street,” said the intelligence source.

Another facility – secret until now – is the SAS Counter-Terrorism training center in Pontrilas in Herefordshire.

The Google site has photographed it to reveal there one of the SAS aircraft used for special forces training exercises.

Another top-secret facility on the website is the exterior of the new ORION Laser Research Facility at Aldermaston, the atomic weapons research center in Berkshire.

Across the Irish Sea, on the edge of a Belfast housing estate, is the Ulster facility of MI5′s Loughside headquarters. It is from there that the Security Service monitors Irish extremists.

“If they didn’t know where we were they most certainly do now,” said an intelligence officer in Northern Ireland.

The Special Boat Service – classified as Highly Secret in Ministry of Defense manuals – has on the website an easily readable sign in red outside. It reads: “Prohibited place within the meaning of the Official Secrets Act. Loitering, sketching, photography forbidden.”

Faced with the full fury of MI5, a Google spokesman said that, “if mistakes are made we will remove the images. We are unaware of any official concerns about security. But we are happy to discuss any issues as they arise.”

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Labours disrespect for the armed services is staggering and their appalling record and betrayal of our military personel cannot go unpunished. I would urge every soldier, sailor, and air force member of the armed services to assist the rest of the people in this country to throw this dredful Labour Government out of power as soon as the General Election takes place. Only then can we begin to properly fund and support not only our fighting men and woman but ensure we get the support that their families deserve as well.

Jim Ferguson

This graph (hat tip to Burning our Money) gets closest to the truth about Labour’s record on defence spending (click on the image to enlarge it):

For the reasons pointed out by BoM, because defence costs have risen faster than inflation the second graph is most relevant. At a time of two wars Labour has cut the buying power of our armed forces.

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Yesterday Gordon Brown told the Iraq inquiry that he gave the military all they needed. Liam Fox hit back, accusing the Prime Minister of being “evasive” and pointing to contradictory statements issued by others.

Today, Mr Brown gets both barrels from retired military chiefs in The Times and Telegraph.

“He’s dissembling, he’s being disingenuous. It’s just not the case that the Ministry of Defence was given everything it needed. There may have been a 1.5 per cent increase in the defence budget but the MoD was starved of funds.” – Admiral Lord Boyce, the Chief of the Defence Staff up to the start of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, quoted in The Times

“To say Gordon Brown has given the military all they asked for is simply not true. He cannot get away with saying I gave them everything they asked for, that is simply disingenuous.” – Lord Guthrie in The Telegraph

“The real truth is the Armed Forces are underfunded.” – Major General Patrick Cordingley, quoted in The Telegraph

Speaking on Radio 4 at 8.15am this morning, General Sir Richard Dannatt backed his former colleagues in the armed forces. The whole of the armed forces had been robbed to provide the basics for combat operations, he told listeners.

In its leader column The Telegraph makes the obvious conclusion:

“What they do know is that there are soldiers who would not have been killed had they been better equipped and whether that was the Treasury’s fault or the MoD’s is neither here nor there. The Government must be held to account; and Mr Brown has been at its heart for 13 years.”

Tim Montgomerie

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Every person should read this and in particular people who voted Labour the last time around. They need to understand the feckless mismanagement of our economy, health care, policing, military and education by this Labour Government and read the proof for themselves.

The only way forward for Britain is to oust this Labour Government and that can only be done when the majority of people across the UK wake up and realise just how far Britain has fallen and the rate at which it continues to fall.

Jim Ferguson

Labour’s Two Nations

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