28 NEWS Dwindling congegations cast pall over Tapping in to the secrets of GCHQ city churches Years of neglect have left Birmingham’s churches crumbling faster than any- Security expert Richard J Aldrich where else in the country, a report has tells Richard McComb about revealed. the threats to privacy posed by A sur vey of t he cit y’s holy buildings has Britain’s electronic snoops. revealed that 28 per cent are at risk of fa lling into ser ious disrepa ir – compa red with an average of nine per cent in other esearching the history of cities. GCHQ, Britain’s largest and English Heritage said dwindling con- arguably most secretive intel- gregations were the main reason that ligence organisation, can be church leaders had struggled to raise an unsettling experience. funds to meet spiralling repair bills. RJust ask security expert Richard J The conservation body has issued Aldrich, who has spent most of the past guidelines to worshippers to help teach decade looking into the super-snoop them how to preserve the buildings for agency, based at Cheltenham in a circu- generations to come. lar building known as The Doughnut. “Churches are all that some communi- Aldrich has just published GCHQ, an ties have left now that post offices and uncensored history of the Government pubs have closed,” said Tim Johnston, Communications Headquarters, a clan- English Heritage’s director for the West destine body both feared and revered for Midlands. its code-breaking exploits and covert, “There’s help out there but there’s also often highly controversial, surveillance a lot that congregations can be doing to techniques. help preserve churches. We have found GCHQ is the direct descendant of some buildings with serious damage to Bletchley Park, whose pipe-smoking stonework just because gutters weren’t cypher boffins were celebrated for crack- cleaned so we will be advocating the old ing Nazi Germany’s wartime communi- adage about a stitch in time,’’ he said. cations. “It’s difficult to put a finger on why Bir- However, the same nostalgic glow has mingham has so many churches in the never bathed the activities of our mod- risk bracket. Dwindling attendance is ern-day Station X, due in part to its one factor but it seems possible that growing reputation for what Aldrich other strands of Christianity have be- calls “retail surveillance.” As his book In his new book come more prevalent than those wor- ma kes clea r, we a re a ll, in a sense, being Richard J Aldrich, shipped in the more traditional church watched; and A ldrich, professor of inter- left, looks at the buildings.” national security at the University of changing role of T hose in Bir mingha m which have been Warwick, is not naive enough to think GCHQ, based near identified as “at risk” include St Ed- that he may have slipped under the Cheltenham, right burgha’s in Yardley – the city’s second radar. After all, snooping on the snoops oldest church, dating back more than – that’s just not British, is it? 800 years. Church leaders have had to stop ring- “It is a great relief to have finished the very time-consuming. Even if you have sages, email, web browsing and finan- ing bells for fear the Grade I-listed spire book so I can leave alone the lead box I got computers checking for key words, cial transactions casting an electronic could collapse and hope to start reme- have been carrying my phone around in you have then got to listen to the tran- web of our public and private movements dial work next year. for the last eight years,” says Aldrich. scripts,” says Aldrich. and sparking a fundamental change in Parishioners at Assemblies of the First “I typed the book on a special laptop “It is much more efficient to go into the nature of intelligence since the end Born on Lozells Road in Lozells also hope that was disabled so it didn’t connect people’s computers. The most important of the Cold War. to move back in next year after eight to the internet. It’s not that I’m para- t hing is to ma ke sure you a re work ing on Aldrich says: “In the Cold War, you years in temporary accommodation. noid or anything.” a computer that doesn’t connect to the think of people smuggling bits of paper Mortuary Chapel at Handsworth Cem- That’s the thing about secrecy: it internet and then you are hygienic.” out of Berlin or Moscow under coat col- eter y is st ill being used for ser v ices but is does breed paranoia. Talking to Hence the “dumb” laptop Aldrich used lars. Now we are dredging intelligence deemed at risk while its state is as- A ldr ich by phone, I a m awa re t hat t he when writing his book. He couldn’t see from much more mundane places – sessed. line is particularly poor, muffled. them; they couldn’t see him. emails, which aren’t encoded, mobile St Barnabas Church in Erdington They’re not listening are they? GCHQ is a fascinating, accessible read, phone conversations, which aren’t en- High Street is also on the list after being “In the United States, we know they detailing the development of the organi- coded, people’s Tesco loyalty cards, gutted by fire in 2007. A planning appli- had an intelligence programme called sation through the Cold War, its daring transport cards. The agencies are over- cation has been approved to create a First Fruits which looked at journal- intelligence-gathering operations under laying all this stuff – your credit card modern structure alongside the remains ists and historians who were the Soviet fleet, the Real IRA’s bombing details, internet access details, details of the 19th century church. studying the intelligence of Omagh and the War on Terror, which they have got from your car number Singers Hill Synagogue on Blucher services. Once you see has put a monumental strain on the in- plate off cameras – and when they over- Street in Birmingham city centre has the Americans doing vestigative resources of all law enforce- lay all that they can build up a minute been given an award by English Heritage it, it’s only prudent to ment agencies, covert or otherwise. The picture of your life. But none of this stuff for conser vat ion a fter worshippers ra ised be cautious,” says wars in Iraq and now Afghanistan, and is terribly secret. It is ordinary stuff. thousands of pounds. The neo-classical Aldrich. crucially, the involvement of British citi- “Our ideas of privacy are changing. hall, dating from 1856, has been devel- He does offer mild zens in al-Qaida inspired terror plots on Britain sent 30 billion texts last year, oped as a centre for all faiths. reassura nce about t he home soil, have blurred the boundaries which are a minute description of our Others singled out for praise by Eng- integrity of my phone between the remit of GCHQ, MI5 (the everyday life. Almost every five minutes lish Heritage chiefs include the Church line. “One of t he t hings domestic intelligence service), MI6 (over- we send out a little electronic signal. of St Leonard, at Yardpole, in Hereford- that professionals tell seas intelligence) and the police. People put themselves on My Space and shire, which is home to the village’s post you is t hat actua lly lis- Then there has been the inexorable Bebo. There is a change in attitude to office and a cafe. tening in to phones is rise of the “wired world” with text mes- privacy. Privacy is dissolving to some .