Constantly on the move, top officials and diplomats prefer to stay in high-end establishments and boutique hotels with premier service standards. And since the number of high-class hotels in the world is finite, British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) came up with the idea of turning them into a huge net to fish for secrets in high-tech style.
Documents
unearthed by Snowden reveal that over a three-year period GCHQ had an automatic
system for singling out people of interest, who made reservations in about 350
upscale hotels worldwide.
Field
operatives then allegedly wiretapped the phone and network cables inside the
targetted suite, and were potentially able to check into the next door suite in
order to eavesdrop the target at the scene.
‘Royal Concierge’ in operation
According
to documents seen by Der Spiegel, when a top official or a diplomat makes a
reservation using his working e-mail address (or his secretary does) with a
governmental domain like .gov, GCHQ gets a notification and decides whether it
needs to take ‘action’ or not.
Once a foreign diplomat is booked into a hotel, putting him under the microscope becomes a purely technical objective. Der Spiegel lists an impressive array of spying techniques and capabilities “that seem to exhaust the creative potential of modern spying”. No details, however, are provided.
On occasions, when a guest of special interest checks in, a crack intellgence unit can be deployed who have 'specialist technologies' for spying at their disposal. GCHQ may also put into action codename 'Humint' [Human Intelligence], for close scrutiny of the target, an operation that could also include field agents working in the vicinity.
Once a foreign diplomat is booked into a hotel, putting him under the microscope becomes a purely technical objective. Der Spiegel lists an impressive array of spying techniques and capabilities “that seem to exhaust the creative potential of modern spying”. No details, however, are provided.
On occasions, when a guest of special interest checks in, a crack intellgence unit can be deployed who have 'specialist technologies' for spying at their disposal. GCHQ may also put into action codename 'Humint' [Human Intelligence], for close scrutiny of the target, an operation that could also include field agents working in the vicinity.
Der
Spiegel also highlights the speculation that ‘Royal Concierge’ could possibly
manipulate hotel choices through the booking programs and also bug hired
cars.