The Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) is a British intelligence agency responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance to the UK government and armed forces. Based in Cheltenham, it operates under the guidance of the Joint Intelligence Committee.
GCHQ was originally established after the First World War as the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS or GCCS), by which name it was known until 1946. During the Second World War it was located at Bletchley Park.
GCHQ is the responsibility of the UK Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, but it is not a part of the Foreign Office, and its Director ranks as a Permanent Secretary.
CESG (originally Communications-Electronics Security Group) is the branch of GCHQ which works to secure the communications and information systems of the government and critical parts of UK national infrastructure.
The JTLS (Joint Technical Language Service) is a small department and cross-government resource responsible for mainly technical language support and translation and interpreting services across government departments. It is co-located with GCHQ for administrative purposes.
Read more about Government Communications Headquarters: Structure, Communications-Electronics Security Group, Joint Technical Language Service, International Relationships, Constitutional Legal Case, Leadership
Famous quotes containing the words government and/or headquarters:
“A woman does not have to make decisions based on the need to survive. She can cut through issues, call shots as she sees them.... Many bad decisions are made by men in government because it is good for them personally to make bad public decisions.”
—Dianne Feinstein (b. 1933)
“If the national security is involved, anything goes. There are no rules. There are people so lacking in roots about what is proper and what is improper that they don’t know there’s anything wrong in breaking into the headquarters of the opposition party.”
—Helen Gahagan Douglas (1900–1980)