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We were making an educational CD-ROM at the BBC in London back in the mid 90s and it had a section about planes. It included some facts about MIG and their jets

by w0mbat 5y ago

We were making an educational CD-ROM at the BBC in London back in the mid 90s and it had a section about planes. It included some facts about MIG and their jets, which we needed to verify. We had a russian programmer on staff and he said "Oh, my cousin works for MIG, I'll just ask him.". So he uses his desk phone to call his cousin who designs planes or something at the MIG factory, they have a short conversation in russian, and he gets the info we need. Later that day, MI5 phones our boss to ask what the hell is going on, having intercepted the call. Apparently it looks really bad to make an international phone call to a secret russian military facility and talk in russian! We tell the MI5 guy on the phone the story, which luckily he believes, so it all turned out OK.

GekkePrutser 5y ago
> Apparently it looks really bad to make an international phone call to a secret russian military facility and talk in russian! I doubt MI5 would not be able to find anyone to translate it :) Also, if they really thought you were a spy they wouldn't have called your boss. They're not in the habit of tipping off spies. And I don't think there's anything illegal in the story anyway. You were getting info from the Russians, not the other way around. Perhaps they were fishing for more info to see if your Russian colleague could be recruited to obtain more info?
- lumost 5y ago
  exact operational parameters of aircraft are a closely guarded secret as the exact numbers allow an opponent to train against the craft as well as develop countermeasures for it. I'd imagine that if MI5 saw that a random encyclopedia company could verify this info, they would be quite interested in getting more.
  - w0mbat 5y ago
    We were just fact-checking our fairly mundane page about MIG the company and the planes they had made, which was written from publicly available info at the time. No secret plane details were asked for or given. It's really good to go to primary sources if you can, you catch a lot of mistakes that way.
- 7952 5y ago
  I guess the alternative to just phoning up is building an operation that would take time and money. In all likelihood the boss is honest and wants to protect the company. A lot of traditional intelligence did rely on the discretion and help of normal people. And in that cold war era spy's were not going to go on a murder spree like a terrorist might if tipped off.

by w0mbat 5y ago

GekkePrutser 5y ago

> Apparently it looks really bad to make an international phone call to a secret russian military facility and talk in russian! I doubt MI5 would not be able to find anyone to translate it :) Also, if they really thought you were a spy they wouldn't have called your boss. They're not in the habit of tipping off spies. And I don't think there's anything illegal in the story anyway. You were getting info from the Russians, not the other way around. Perhaps they were fishing for more info to see if your Russian colleague could be recruited to obtain more info?

lumost 5y ago
exact operational parameters of aircraft are a closely guarded secret as the exact numbers allow an opponent to train against the craft as well as develop countermeasures for it. I'd imagine that if MI5 saw that a random encyclopedia company could verify this info, they would be quite interested in getting more.
- w0mbat 5y ago
  We were just fact-checking our fairly mundane page about MIG the company and the planes they had made, which was written from publicly available info at the time. No secret plane details were asked for or given. It's really good to go to primary sources if you can, you catch a lot of mistakes that way.
7952 5y ago
I guess the alternative to just phoning up is building an operation that would take time and money. In all likelihood the boss is honest and wants to protect the company. A lot of traditional intelligence did rely on the discretion and help of normal people. And in that cold war era spy's were not going to go on a murder spree like a terrorist might if tipped off.