ABIN 2018 — Questão 20 · Língua Inglesa - Compreensão e Interpretação de Texto

Text CB1A5BBB

¹ __Western intelligence agencies used to inhabit a

parallel world where spy battled spy. Their trade was stealing

or guarding secrets. Their masters were the men and women in

⁴ government. Today the intelligence services are part of

everyone’s world. Their main task has been to protect society

from terrorists and criminals. They are increasingly held to

⁷ account in the press, parliaments and courts.

__The intelligence revolution is partly the result of new

technology. As recently as 1999, on becoming director of the

¹⁰ American National Security Agency (NSA), Michael Hayden

asked to send an e-mail to all staff. He was told: “We can’t

actually do that.” The organization used computers to break

¹³ codes rather than to surf the web as everyone else did.

The NSA’s new facility in Utah, the first of several, now stores

exabytes of data drawn from everyday communications.

¹⁶ At Britain’s GCHQ, most code-breaking was done on paper

until well into the 1980s.

__The revolution has brought spying closer to ordinary

¹⁹ people. After the attacks on America on September 11^th 2001,

counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency became the focus for

the American intelligence agencies. Almost two-thirds of

²² today’s intelligence personnel have been hired since 9/11.

As the world has moved online, so the spooks have become

involved in monitoring organized crime and paedophiles as

²⁵ well as terrorists.

__In a not very remote past, spies sent coded messages

using short-wave radios and dead letter boxes. Now the

²⁸ communications of the spooks’ new targets are mixed in with

everyone else’s, shuttling between computers and smartphones

that are identical to those on your desk and in your pocket.

³¹ Counter-terrorism, in particular, is pre-emptive. Hence the

security services have had to act as hunters of conspiracies

rather than gatherers of evidence.

Western intelligence — Shaken and stirred.

In: The Economist, 12/11/2016 (adapted)

Based on text CB1A5BBB, judge the following items.

GCHQ experts decided to stop producing academic papers about code-breaking techniques only in the two last decades of the last century.