I grew up in Gloucestershire with neighbours that worked for GCHQ and at least three of my school friends went on to work for the doughnut shaped building (which was a collection of huts back then). Over the years we have had our chats and I tried to work out what they do and why they do it. Were they really dedicated to catching the terrorists?

The benefits of working there are simple: a job for life with enough money to pay the mortgage. Perfect if you want to start a family, bring up the kids in idyllic countryside, work sensible hours with a reasonable commute and retire with a pension worth having. You don't get this if you work in London! For a lot of people this is a pretty good deal, what surprises me is that GCHQ don't try to attract people on this basis.

One of my school friends that went to work for them was actually very bright, however, he was also the first to get into whatever drugs were available and he had a drinking problem before being legally allowed to buy the stuff (18 in the UK). A few years ago I was able to talk with him candidly about interception capabilities, e.g. the lengths one would need to in order to place a truly anonymous phone call. I was also able to chat about things in his domain, e.g. the practicalities of managing untold petabytes of data. He was not a completely leaking sieve, however, if he did have any secrets worth sharing then I am sure that an attractive girl with a four pack of lager would have been able to compromise him in a matter of minutes. He was borderline suitable for 'handling state secrets' (in my opinion).

Questioning his motivation, a lot of it came down to kiddie porn - of all things. He saw himself and the agency as the moral guardian that was saving the world from kiddie fiddlers and their evil ways. So the ethics of 'gentlemen don't read other gentlemen's mail' did not come into it - some of that mail could be kiddie porn!

As for my other school friends that worked there, they were borderline 'special needs', absent from the top class of maths and maybe 3-5 sets down in the maths pecking order. They were not super-bright by any stretch of the imagination. However, they were smart enough to hold the job down as they had not been given too many stellar opportunities elsewhere. Their lack of intellectual horsepower was an asset in that they would do their work, not ask too many questions and not spill the beans when plied with alcohol by some voluptuous lass.

However, I suspected that they were kept in the dark like mushrooms. They were not privy to the grand plan. They may have had 'dogsbody data entry' work that they just did until clocking off time. They did not have exciting work, hence all the more reason not to talk about it. But they did work on secret stuff, apparently, and that was ego-boost-worthy to them, or at least that was the exterior appearance.

Although anecdotal, what I do know is that GCHQ is not stuffed to the gills with super-smart code crackers that are more giftedly geniuser than you is. There are flawed characters and intellectual also-rans making up the numbers. Like any employer (except Google) they have challenges in attracting the best and brightest, but, for the bulk of their work, they don't actually need the truly gifted. Do-as-your-told types will suffice.

GCHQ can attract intellectual also rans for the 'data entry roles' by hiring locally, the deal being cosy job for life. But, to hire the really clever people needed that they really, really want, what is the hook?

I don't know what happened to the 'war on kiddie porn' but it is now something that the likes of the FBI and GCHQ aren't making a big song and dance about. As for the 'war on terror' that has been bogus since day one, like it or not there are no 'al-qaeda' terrorists out there (although there may be Somali pirates etc.). There is no 'Soviet threat' either. We can only guess as to what they really do, however, thanks to Snowden, we can have a good guess about some of it. I personally don't think that mass surveillance pays the bills as well as doing the spying necessary to win arms deals, so we are still guessing about what they do.

I know everyone has their price, but, why would anyone clever enough to work out these ciphers want to work for GCHQ given the true nature of what they do, i.e. do the American's spying for them?