FOR MOST of its 87-year history, the men and women of His Majesty’s Government Communications Centre (HMGCC), at Hanslope Park near Milton Keynes in central England, have toiled in obscurity to develop “operational technology”, or optech, for British spies—gadgetry like covert radio sets and bugs, and, later, software. In recent years that obscurity has dimmed a little. Journalists have been invited in (though shown little). HMGCC has also begun sharing some of its problems.