The sweet taste of, “I was right!”

“I was right!” or rather Beloved was right and, as her partner and protector, I was right too!

Do you ever wish that you could put someone down like Woody Allen does when he suddenly produces the Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan in the film Annie Hall?  You remember… It’s the scene where Woody and Annie are standing in a movie queue waiting to take their seats in the cinema.

Hang on a mo’.  I’ll get the clip for you…

A couple of months back we had a discussion around a friend’s dinner table where Beloved was disparaged and portrayed as a raving conspiracy-theorist loon.  She may have been a tad under the afluence of incerhol but she is well researched and is certainly no loon!

The phrase, conspiracy-theorist, has nowadays become weaponised and is used as an insult to close a discussion down.  What the perpetrator is really saying is, “You’re a nutter you are, and for my own part I’m so brainwashed and dumbed-down by our media that I can no longer think for myself, so I refuse to talk to you!  Talking to anyone who thinks for themselves is a complete no-no!  So there!”  However, as events have panned out, Beloved has been proved to be right.

I knew all along that she was right of course, but as a Secret Agent I had to keep schtum.  As you will understand I have a security sensitive job so I have to be careful using people’s names and I have found it prudent to run my blog on a no names, no pack drill basis.

The topic under discussion was, strangely enough, the security forces and their operational capabilities.  Another reason for me to be outspoken in my silence.  More specifically, Beloved had said that she’d found on some of the more well-informed blogs that MI5, MI6 (SIS), GCHQ, NSA, et al could not only hack into your smart phone but they could even switch the damned thing on remotely if they chose so to do, and then they could hack whatever data they wished to get from it.

One young man, code named Tory Boy locally, (though his real name is Michael) snorted contemptuous derision at Beloved saying that she was talking nonsense and that when his smart phone was switched off, it was Switched Off!  Even after being told that Beloved does a lot of research into these things, on internet blogs such as those run by Annie Machon and Craig Murray, Tory Boy Michael followed this up with, “Where did you get that from… the telly?”  The sneeringly haughty tone very nearly earned him a poke in the eye with my Secret Service, Sharp Stick.

How lovely it would have been to be able to produce an expert from the larder cupboard behind me and have Tory Boy Michael put straight.  However I was not to have my Woody Allen moment, at least not in the short term.

By happy happenstance, the topic was brought up twice recently on mainstream TV.  One was a BBC Panorama documentary about, and including an interview with, Edward Snowden where he went into some detail regarding the capabilities of the NSA, CIA and GCHQ being able to remotely switch on and hack our smart phones, using Smurfs.  I kid you not.  The other programme was BBC’s Have I Got News For You where Ian Hislop mentioned the topic too.

Why do the Secret Services have this ability?  They will tell us that it’s all to do with fighting terrorism and it’s all a jolly good idea, if you have nothing to hide.  However the increasing number of people who have found pizza and other assorted take-away meals ordered covertly using their own i-phones, charged to their bank accounts using ApplePay and delivered to Thames House (MI5’s London HQ) would bely this piece of propaganda.  My advice is, don’t trust the Secret Services!  I work for them and I wouldn’t trust them as far as I could orally eject a badger.

So, the burning question of the moment is this.  What should I do now this piece of information has been safely revealed in the public arena?  Should I say nothing and rest assured that Beloved was correct, like a mature man should?  Or should I jump up and down on Michael’s doorstep screaming, “I Told You So! – Dickhead! – And it was on the telly!”

As a Secret Agent, I will do neither of these things.  Instead I have downloaded both TV programmes, burned them to a DVD and typed a rude note, to be posted through his door in the dead of night.  Just like it’s a dead-drop.  It’s simply what a good spy should do…