intelNews is a news blog on intelligence agencies, espionage, and surveillance, covering stories from the CIA, MI6, and other services.
HN commenters cite it for background on espionage history, such as Operation Pimlico, and for reports on intelligence-sharing between countries.
https://intelnews.org/tag/operation-pimlico/
PIMLICO was an emergency exfiltration operation that had been put in place by MI6 long before Gordievsky requested its activation in May of 1985.
Every Tuesday, shortly after 7:00, a British MI6 officer would take a morning stroll at the Kutuzovsky Prospekt in Moscow. He would pass outside a designated bakery at exactly 7:24 a.m. local time. If he saw Gordievsky standing outside the bakery holding a grocery bag, it meant that the double agent was requesting to be exfiltrated as a matter of urgency. Gordievsky would then have to wait outside the bakery until a second MI6 officer appeared, carrying a bag from the Harrods luxury department store in London. The man would also be carrying a Mars bar (a popular British candy bar) and would bite into it while passing right in front of Gordievsky. That would be a message to him that his request to be exfiltrated had been received.
Four days later, Gordievsky used his skills in evading surveillance and shook off (or dry-cleaned, in espionage tradecraft lingo) the KGB officers trailing him. He was then picked up by MI6 officers and smuggled out of the country in the trunk of a British diplomatic car that drove to the Finnish border. Gordievsky told The Times that Soviet customs officers stopped the car at the Finnish border and surrounded it with sniffer dogs. At that moment, a British diplomat’s wife, who was aware that Gordievsky was hiding in the car, came out of the vehicle and…
And what are the government's own spying practices ? Ah :
http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/content/view/209/1/lang,en/
(please note that the only thing the court did was place limits. Every ISP that has lines in Germany is still forced to (a) spy on all it's customers and report the data to the German government (b) allow Germany to tap any of it's customers. It's just that the resulting data can't be used in civil suits)
Given that Germany does this to it's own citizens, isn't it exactly as bad as the US ? Sure, it looks like the German government is somewhat less capable when it comes to spying than the NSA is, but it's not fundamentally different. And of course, that could be an illusion.
I seem to remember having this article about how Germany sold an old diesel submarine capable of undersea fiber tapping to Israel. I can't seem to find the article, but it does mean Germany has these subs. I find it hard to believe they're unused. Here's an article about the British version :
http://intelnews.org/2013/08/29/01-1331/
I'm in telecommunications and I know for a fact that all northwest european countries have these demands on ISPs. Germany's no exception.
This setup reminds me of operation PIMLICO:
> Every Tuesday, shortly after 7:00, a British MI6 officer would take a morning stroll at the Kutuzovsky Prospekt in Moscow. He would pass outside a designated bakery at exactly 7:24 a.m. local time. If he saw Gordievsky standing outside the bakery holding a grocery bag, it meant that the double agent was requesting to be exfiltrated as a matter of urgency. Gordievsky would then have to wait outside the bakery until a second MI6 officer appeared, carrying a bag from the Harrods luxury department store in London. The man would also be carrying a Mars bar (a popular British candy bar) and would bite into it while passing right in front of Gordievsky. That would be a message to him that his request to be exfiltrated had been received.
https://intelnews.org/tag/operation-pimlico/
"The United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia have targeted Soleimani for assassination for over a decade. In 2019 alone, Iran reported over half a dozen alleged plots to kill the general, the most recent of which was in early October." [1]
[1] https://intelnews.org/2020/01/03/01-2700/
No .. the US is hacking/spying on every worthwhile entity. And so is everybody else. It doesn't mean a thing about who the "enemy" is. This is the status quo; it's Spy vs. Spy.
Example: http://intelnews.org/2011/02/07/01-652/
The Netherlands has also cut back on intelligence sharing with the US: https://intelnews.org/2025/10/20/01-3416/