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Depending on your age and foreign language ability, fulfilling your James Bond spy fantasies may not be very realistic—but spying for the British government just got more accessible.
MI6, Britain’s foreign intelligence service, which is broadly comparable to the CIA, is launching a new online system dubbed Silent Courier, which will use a “dark web” portal to collect confidential tips from grassroots spies across the globe. The dark web is a part of the internet that remains inaccessible to most, and you need a special web browser like Tor to use it. It’s often used for things like drug sales and trading extreme pornography, but it also hosts plenty of political activism and organizing as well.
MI6 clearly has particular targets in mind for the new tool. The organization’s YouTube channel has translations of how to use the new portal in Russian, Chinese, Arabic, and Farsi (the main language of Iran), yet translations in other common languages like French, German, or Japanese are absent. MI6 didn’t publicly disclose how the tech behind the portal works, or how it plans to ensure informants’ anonymity, but recommends that users employ a VPN to keep themselves safe.
Regardless of how safe the technology is, sharing state secrets with foreign powers is a dangerous game. It carries a prison term of up to 20 years in Russia, and Iran has even handed out death penalties in recent years to people accused of engaging in espionage.
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“As the world changes, and the threats we’re facing multiply, we must ensure the UK is always one step ahead of our adversaries,” said the UK’s Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper. “Our world-class intelligence agencies are at the coalface of this challenge, working behind the scenes to keep British people safe.”
It’s not just the UK that is using social media to recruit new spies. In 2023, the CIA started posting videos on Telegram, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook about how Russians can contact the agency anonymously.
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I’m a reporter covering weekend news. Before joining PCMag in 2024, I picked up bylines in BBC News, The Guardian, The Times of London, The Daily Beast, Vice, Slate, Fast Company, The Evening Standard, The i, TechRadar, and Decrypt Media.
I’ve been a PC gamer since you had to install games from multiple CD-ROMs by hand. As a reporter, I’m passionate about the intersection of tech and human lives. I’ve covered everything from crypto scandals to the art world, as well as conspiracy theories, UK politics, and Russia and foreign affairs.
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